Pope Leo XIV paused at a small stone staircase in the Garden of the Carmelites, on the campus of the Catholic University of Paris, during a visit to the French capital on September 26, 2026. The four steps are inscribed with the Latin words “Hic Cicidereunt” — “Here they fell” — marking the spot where a mob killed roughly 150 priests held prisoner there during the French Revolution.
The Pope prayed silently before the stele, which was decorated with flowers, as photographers recorded the moment. The killings took place in September 1792, three years into the Revolution, amid a broader campaign against the French monarchy and the Catholic Church. Revolutionary leaders at the time promoted a rival belief system they called the Cult of Reason, or Culte de la Raison.
Historian Christopher Hibbert has described the scene at the Carmelite convent, on the Rue de Vaugirard, when armed men entered the garden demanding the Archbishop of Arles. According to Hibbert’s account, one priest who stepped forward to ask for a fair trial was shot in the shoulder, and the Archbishop was then struck with a sword and killed with a pike after identifying himself. The rest of the imprisoned clergy were killed and their bodies piled together. The Catholic Church later beatified the victims as martyrs.
Later the same day, Pope Leo XIV celebrated an outdoor Mass at the Place de la Concorde, which during the Revolution’s Reign of Terror was known as the Place de la Revolution and served as a site of public executions, including that of King Louis XVI on January 21, 1793. Organizers and photographs from the event show large crowds, estimated at 800,000 people, lining the Champs-Elysees and surrounding areas, with the Arc de Triomphe visible in the background as the Pope arrived in the popemobile.
Part of a Broader Trip
The visit to the Carmelite garden and the Mass at Place de la Concorde came during a wider papal tour of France that included both large public ceremonies and smaller, personal gestures. The trip follows a visit Pope Leo XIV made to Spain in May, where he also visited memorials connected to Catholics killed by leftist forces during that country’s history.
France has maintained a strict separation of church and state, known as laïcité, since a wave of early 20th-century legislation aimed at limiting the political and social influence of the Catholic Church, a policy that has remained largely in place since.
The Vatican did not issue a statement characterizing the visit to the Carmelite memorial as a political statement, and the Pope did not comment publicly on French government policy during either stop described above.
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