As Pope Leo prepares to visit France, can its ‘Catholic moment’ become a lasting revival?

(RNS) – Audrey Bourgès said she had to remind herself to breathe as she walked toward the priest in the Notre-Dame Cathedral  in Paris to be baptized during the Easter Vigil last year.

After a nearly three-hour ceremony, tears filled her eyes as she embraced her mother, a practicing Catholic, and her father, an atheist. Her parents had allowed their children to choose their own religious beliefs as adults. Bourgès chose Catholicism.

“It was the best day of my life,” the 26-year-old said.

Her journey began after a “bad breakup” left her crying on a Paris street, she said. A stranger suggested she seek help at the nearby church of Sainte-Anne de la Butte-aux-Cailles, where she met a 90-year-old nun who listened to her grief.

Between 2022 and 2024, Bourgès would visit the sister every Wednesday to discuss life and faith. Eventually, she started attending Mass. “I felt like, this is my place,” she said. “These are the answers to my questions.”

Bourgès entered the catechumenate, or the instruction period ahead of baptism into the Catholic Church, in 2024. She became the first person to be baptized at Notre-Dame after its reconstruction following the blaze that nearly…