From TikTok to church pews, France's Catholic influencers find a new flock

In the span of 24 hours, hundreds of thousands of people had already signed up to see Pope Leo XIV during his upcoming visit to Paris. The pontiff will visit the capital on September 25 and 26, the opening leg of a four-day apostolic tour of France that will also take him to Lourdes and Metz. But for young people, it's the Stade de France leg of the trip that has stirred the most excitement. On the evening of September 25, Leo XIV will host a prayer vigil for people aged 17 to 35 in the same arena where Beyoncé performed last year. And when registration opened, the stadium's tens of thousands of free places were claimed within the hour. That same appetite shows up in harder numbers, too. Though France has seen a sharp decline in the number of priests ordained, from 65,000 in 1960 to 12,000 in 2023, baptisms among adults and teenagers have surged from just under 6,000 in 2022 to over 21,000 in 2026. A rise that is due, in part, to France’s Catholic influencers preaching the gospel on social media. Stop scrolling and pray with me Brother Paul-Adrien, a Dominican Catholic monk and influencer, has adopted all the trappings of the YouTuber trade. Against a modern backdrop of brick wallp...