Capital of France and home to Notre-Dame Cathedral, which reopened in December 2024 after five years of restoration following the 2019 fire. The papal visit to Paris includes an address at UNESCO headquarters in the 7th arrondissement — the first papal address to UNESCO since John Paul II in 1980 — and a solemn celebration at Notre-Dame, symbol of the restored relationship between French culture and the Church.

A small village in the Moselle region of Lorraine, Scy-Chazelles is the burial place of Robert Schuman (1886–1963) — statesman, devout Catholic, and co-founder of what became the European Union. Schuman's cause for beatification was opened in 1990; no pope has visited his tomb until now. Pope Leo XIV's pilgrimage here is a gesture of recognition for the Christian roots of European unity and of Schuman's ongoing path to sainthood.

One of the world's great Marian shrines, Lourdes draws six million pilgrims a year to the site where the Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette Soubirous eighteen times in 1858. The grotto at Massabielle and the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception are the spiritual heart of the visit. Papal Masses at Lourdes are traditionally held in the Prairie alongside the Gave de Pau river, which accommodates up to 100,000 faithful.