The Pope, the crowd and the wounds by Emma Schneider

There are moments when the Catholic Church manages to look both enormous and painfully small. Pope Leo XIV’s historic journey through France is one of them. Nearly two decades after the last official papal state visit, Leo arrived in a country where Catholicism remains deeply embedded in history but no longer commands the political and social authority it once enjoyed. Then came Paris: hundreds of thousands of people, an open-air Mass, the popemobile, the banners, the cameras and a crowd estimated by the Vatican at around 800,000.

That is an extraordinary crowd. But crowds are not absolution. The Catholic Church has always been remarkably good at producing magnificent spectacles. Cathedrals, ceremonies, incense, music, processions, golden robes and millions of believers can create an almost irresistible image of institutional permanence. But the Church's real test is not how many people will stand in a Paris square to see the Pope. It is what happens when the cameras disappear.

And that is why Lourdes matters more than Paris. There, Leo met privately with seven survivors of clerical sexual abuse, four men and three women. Their presence transformed the pilgrimage from another grand exercise in papal theatre into something far more uncomfortable: a confrontation with the people whose lives were damaged by the institution the Pope represents.

France has already confronted the enormity of that wound. A major independent investigation estimated that about 330,000 minors experienced sexual abuse connected to the Catholic Church in France over seven decades. Thousands have since sought recognition and reparations.

No papal embrace can repair that. No prayer can return a stolen childhood. No carefully prepared meeting can substitute for accountability. That is the brutal arithmetic of institutional abuse.

Leo has spoken about ensuring that such evil is not repeated. Those words matter. But words from a Pope are not the destination; they are the beginning of an obligation. The Church must demonstrate that protection of children is more important than protection of reputations, that transparency is stronger than secrecy and that survivors are not inconvenient reminders of an embarrassing past but central witnesses to what the institution must become.

Then there was artificial intelligence. The Pope's decision to address AI is hardly surprising. The technology is changing work, education, information, warfare and even the way human beings understand truth itself. Leo has connected technological progress with questions of human dignity and responsibility.

But there is an uncomfortable irony here. The Church is warning humanity about the dangers of machines while still wrestling with the failures of human institutions. Perhaps that is precisely the point.

The future will not be saved by technology alone, nor by religious spectacle, nor by political power. It will depend on whether institutions can remember that human beings are not disposable components in somebody else's system.

Paris demonstrated the Church's capacity to gather people. Lourdes demonstrated its obligation to listen to them. The difference is everything. The Pope can fill a square with 800,000 people. The harder task is earning the trust of one wounded survivor sitting across the table. That is where the real pilgrimage begins.