Grab your sound-blocking headphones! Pope Leo's arrival in Paris is set to make considerably more noise than your average big event.
When Pope Leo XIV arrives in France on September 25, there will be no need to wait for a news alert to ping on our phones to tell us that his plane has landed. France has arranged a considerably louder notification.
At 10 a.m., as the Pope arrives at Paris-Orly for his four-day apostolic visit, churches across the country have been invited to ring their bells for seven minutes. From great cathedrals to village churches, the sound will carry across France, interrupting Friday morning with the unmistakable message that a rather important visitor has arrived.
And seven minutes is definitely long enough to be noticed. In towns and cities, the bells will rise above the usual Friday-morning soundtrack of traffic, beeping horns, scooters and sirens, giving people a reason to look up from their coffee or pause on their way to work. Out in the countryside, the sound will carry across fields, where a few unsuspecting cows may well look up and wonder what on earth is going on.
Human or otherwise, it will certainly be difficult to miss. And if you happen to be sandwiched between two participating churches, you might want to welcome the Holy Father with some ear defenders handy.
The original push notification
The news of this seven-minute notification made us think how today our phones are simply doing electronically what church bells managed perfectly well for centuries. Long before anybody could send a message to an entire town, bells could tell a community that it was time for Mass, that a couple had married, that somebody had died, or that something worth celebrating had happened.
They also marked the ordinary rhythm of the day. The Angelus bell called people to prayer morning, noon, and evening, reaching farmers in fields, shopkeepers at work and families at home. You didn't need an account, a password or a decent Wi-Fi connection; you simply needed to be within earshot.
On Friday, those bells will be back on news duty. Pope Leo's first apostolic visit to France will inevitably unfold across television, websites and social media, with photographs from Orly appearing around the world almost before he has had time to leave the airport. Meanwhile, church towers across the country will be passing on exactly the same news using technology that has worked for the best part of a millennium -- and how reassuring it is!
A welcome far beyond Paris
The nationwide ringing also means that Pope Leo's arrival doesn't belong only to the crowds waiting for him in Paris. The organizers have invited churches throughout France to join in precisely so that people can take part in the welcome wherever they happen to be.
And for Catholics, those seven minutes offer time to do something other than listen. Pope Leo has an extraordinary few days ahead of him, with meetings, speeches, enormous crowds and a schedule taking him from Paris to Lourdes and Metz. As the bells announce his arrival, they can also serve their oldest purpose and call people to prayer, perhaps offering a moment to pray for the man at the center of all that activity and for the visit itself.
Paris, meanwhile, gets a second notification. At 5 p.m., churches across the capital have been invited to ring again as Pope Leo makes his way through the city towards vespers at Notre-Dame Cathedral, meaning anyone who managed to miss the morning's seven-minute announcement has very little excuse the second time around.
We're accustomed to important news arriving silently on a screen, competing with emails, messages, headlines and the notification reminding us that somebody we haven't spoken to since 2009 has updated their LinkedIn profile. On September 25, France is giving the Church seven whole minutes to announce one simple piece of very exciting news: Pope Leo is here!
