When Pope Leo XIV visited France in late September, immense crowds flooded the streets to greet him, to the delight and surprise of observers across the West. Images from the four-day visit were breathtaking: a sea of French and Vatican flags rippling down the Champs-Elysees, parents hoisting children onto their shoulders for a glimpse, hundreds of thousands kneeling in prayer, priests hearing confessions in the open air.
Within days of his departure, a very different crowd had taken over the streets. Riots that began at a high school in the suburb of Creteil spilled into the capital and across France, ostensibly over the state of the country’s public schools. But the raw footage of the streets make clear this is about far more than leaky roofs and teacher shortages.
