Pope Kneels Where Priests Were Slaughtered

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Pope Leo XIV knelt in prayer this week at the exact stone staircase in Paris where revolutionary mobs slaughtered more than 100 Catholic priests over two bloody days in 1792.

Story Snapshot

Pope Leo XIV visited the Carmelite church of Saint Joseph in Paris, praying at a memorial to priests killed during the 1792 September Massacres.
The stop came during his first full apostolic journey to France, which also included Notre-Dame Cathedral, a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron, and the shrine at Lourdes.
Historical accounts put the number of clergy killed at the site between 96 and 191, depending on the source, with many later beatified by the Catholic Church.
The Vatican framed the trip as a call for clergy and religious in France to return to missionary conversion and prayer.

A Solemn Stop Inside a Larger Journey

Pope Leo XIV traveled to France starting September 25, 2026, on his first state visit to the country since 2008. The Vatican-announced schedule included prayer at Notre-Dame Cathedral, meetings with French officials, and a pilgrimage to Lourdes. Woven into that itinerary was a visit to the Carmelite church of Saint Joseph in Paris, where he prayed at a staircase memorializing priests and religious killed during the French Revolution.

The church, known as Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes, holds a crypt built specifically to honor clergy killed there during the September Massacres of 1792. Those killings took place across Paris prisons between September 2 and September 6, when armed crowds executed prisoners suspected of opposing the revolution, including priests who had refused to swear loyalty to a new law controlling the church.

Counting the Dead of the September Massacres

Historical records vary on exact numbers at the Carmelite site itself. Some accounts describe more than 100 clergy killed there specifically, while broader tallies of the September Massacres across all of Paris list 223 nonjuring priests and bishops among the dead. The Catholic Church later beatified 191 of these victims as the Holy September Martyrs, honoring their refusal to abandon their faith under threat of death.

A social media post that circulated ahead of the papal visit put the number specifically honored at the Carmelite staircase at 115. That figure sits within the range historians have documented for the site, though official Vatican statements from the trip did not repeat a specific casualty count. The exact number killed at that single location remains described differently across historical sources.

Vespers at Notre-Dame and Talks With Macron

Beyond the memorial visit, Pope Leo XIV celebrated vespers at Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Paris landmark that reopened in 2024 after a fire nearly destroyed it. He addressed French clergy and religious there, calling them toward renewed missionary purpose. He also met with President Emmanuel Macron and spoke to civil authorities and the diplomatic corps gathered in the capital.

Organizers expected more than one million people to take part across the full trip, which spanned Paris, Lourdes, and Metz. The Vatican described the visit as a pastoral mission focused on prayer and clergy renewal, not a political event, distinguishing it from routine head-of-state diplomacy.

FRANCE 🇫🇷

Pope Leo XIV will visit the Carmelite church of Saint Joseph in Paris and pray at the staircase in memorial of the 115 priests and religious martyred there during the September Massacres in the French Revolution pic.twitter.com/KRQePqk24U

— Catholic Arena (@CatholicArena) September 22, 2026

A Pilgrimage That Continues at Lourdes

After Paris, the Pope traveled to the shrine at Lourdes, one of the Catholic Church’s most visited pilgrimage sites, known for reports of healing tied to its spring waters. The stop drew crowds preparing for his arrival in the days before he landed, with the sanctuary readying for what officials called one of its busiest events in years.

The memorial prayer at Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes connects a modern papal visit to a specific, documented chapter of history when clergy were killed for refusing to renounce their faith. Whether the precise number honored was 96, 115, or closer to 191 depends on which historical record is consulted, but the underlying event, and the Pope’s visit to remember it, is well established.