Pope Leo to visit France, UNESCO and Macron in September trip

Pope Leo XIV will use a September trip to France to step squarely into the crosscurrents of religion, diplomacy and global institution-building, with a planned stop at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters underscoring the agency’s financial strain after the United States pulled back under Donald Trump.

The Vatican announced that Leo will travel to France from September 25 to 28, with the itinerary expected to include a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and a visit to UNESCO. The trip would be the first official papal state visit to France since Benedict XVI went to Paris and Lourdes in 2008, giving the journey immediate political and symbolic weight. It would also mark one of Leo’s first major overseas engagements as the first U.S.-born pope.

UNESCO’s vulnerability is part of what makes the visit resonate well beyond church circles. The agency says the U.S. contribution now accounts for 8% of its total budget, far below the 40% share seen in some other United Nations bodies. That gap has forced UNESCO to lean more heavily on diversified funding, a reminder that Trump-era retrenchment continues to shape the institutions meant to defend education, science and cultural heritage.

The pope’s Paris stop will also intersect with French domestic politics. Macron met Leo privately at the Vatican on April 10, 2026, and reporting around the trip says Leo could address the French parliament and celebrate Mass at Notre-Dame Cathedral. The cathedral, reopened in 2024 after the 2019 fire, remains one of France’s most charged national symbols, a site where restoration, faith and statehood meet in public view.

Leo’s visit would be his fourth foreign voyage of 2026, after a day trip to Monaco in March and a visit to four African nations in April, with Spain and the Canary Islands also planned for June. Some Vatican-linked reporting describes the France journey as his fifth international apostolic journey overall, reflecting how quickly he has built a travel agenda that reaches well beyond Rome.

The timing matters. Francis visited France three times, to Strasbourg, Marseille and Corsica, but none of those trips carried the status of an official state visit. Leo’s France trip, by contrast, places a newly assertive pope in front of one of Europe’s most prominent secular governments and one of the world’s most visible multilateral institutions. In that setting, the question is not only what the Church wants to say, but who still has the power and the will to defend global cultural and educational institutions now under pressure.