Secularization and fight for life: Luxembourg duke visits Pope

Grand Duke Guillaume, accompanied by his wife Grand Duchess Stéphanie, reserved one of his first international trips for the Vatican, a few months after succeeding his father Grand Duke Henri, who chose to abdicate after 25 years of reign.

He met with Pope Leo XIV and was then received by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State of the Holy See, accompanied by Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States.

This meeting at the Secretariat of State provided an opportunity to highlight the “good diplomatic relations” between the Holy See and Luxembourg.

In addition to “relations between the Church and the State,” the two parties discussed “current international affairs, with particular attention to the European context.”

The Grand Duke and the papal diplomats also discussed internal issues within Luxembourg society, such as “social cohesion, the education of young people, and safeguarding the dignity of life and of the human person.”

The mention of this topic echoes the vote scheduled for this coming March by the Luxembourg Parliament on the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution, based on the French model.

In December 2008, Grand Duke Henri, the current leader’s father, refused to sign the law legalizing euthanasia. This refusal led to a constitutional revision that stripped the Grand Duke of some of his prerogatives; the law passed, despite his opposition, in 2009. It thus became only the third European country to legalize euthanasia, after Netherlands and Belgium, both of which have vastly expanded the criteria in successive years.

Luxembourg received a visit from Pope Francis on September 26, 2024. This stop on his way to Belgium was seen as a show of support from the Argentine pontiff for Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, Archbishop of Luxembourg. Cardinal Hollerich was a key figure in the Synod on Synodality as rapporteur at the 2023 and 2024 assemblies held at the Vatican.

This small country (less than 1,000 square miles in area, smaller than the state of Rhode Island) has 670,000 inhabitants, and is one of the few in Europe to see its population grow, although this is due more to immigration than to births.

Around 70% of its population consists of baptized Catholics. However, in recent decades it has been swept by a strong wave of secularization, which led in particular to the legal separation of Church and State in a multi-stage process between 2015 and 2018.