Pope Leo XIV is continuing his visit to France on Sunday in the Marian pilgrimage site of Lourdes, where a service with several tens of thousands of participants is planned.

The head of the Catholic Church also intends to speak with people who were victims of sexual abuse by clergy.

The French Church has also been shaken by abuse allegations in recent years.

Lourdes, a town of 13,400 inhabitants, is one of Europe’s best-known pilgrimage sites.

According to Catholic belief, the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, is said to have appeared there several times to a 14-year-old girl in the mid-19th century.

Mr Leo plans to remain in France until Monday.

The final stop of his four-day trip is the city of Metz, in the east of the country and close to the Franco-German border, where the U.S.-born pontiff plans to deliver a speech on Europe.

At the start of his trip, he visited the capital, Paris, where he celebrated Mass with a congregation of 800,000 on Saturday.

France has maintained a strict separation of Church and state for more than a century, with the exception of some regions in the east of the country for historical reasons.

Catholics remain the largest religious group in France, but many people in the country no longer identify with any religion.

The proportion of Muslims in the country of 69 million has grown in recent years. 

(dpa/NAN)