From the London Telegraph:
The Champs-Élysées takes its name from the Elysian Fields, the paradise of Greek mythology. On Saturday, the famous Paris avenue revelled in the divine once more. A sea of 800,000 faithful waving French and Vatican flags turned out to watch Pope Leo XIV celebrate a vast open-air mass in Paris’s Place de la Concorde, with the crowd spilling all the way up the Champs-Élysées.
It was the high point of the Pope’s four-day tour, during which he had received a rock-star welcome and been courted by the broad spectrum of France’s political elite. But in his sermon to the city, he warned against “material goods”, “immediate gratification” and “the countless little idols that promise the Moon but leave our hearts empty”.
From CW:
Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass this afternoon at the Place de la Concorde in Paris (video 1, video 2) and emphasized in his homily that Jesus quenches the thirst present in every human heart.
Vatican News reported that 700,000 people attended the Mass.
“The desire for God dwells deep within our hearts, and we cry out with the psalmist: ‘My soul thirsts for God, for the living God,’“ (Ps 42:2), Pope Leo preached. “This is the cry of a humble and passionate heart whose deepest, most existential thirst continues to grow. And it is Jesus Christ, through his Incarnation, who comes to meet every person in the midst of his or her own story, and reveals himself as the true source of living water capable of quenching our thirst.”