Pope Leo visits glitzy Monaco where there are nearly as many casinos as churches

Pope Leo XIV has called on the world’s mega-rich to use their wealth to help those in need during a visit to Monaco.

Leo flew in on a helicopter for the one-day trip to the world’s second-smallest state, the first papal visit there in nearly 500 years.

The Vatican said he wanted to show that small countries can make an outsized impact on the world stage.

The glitzy enclave on the French Riviera is known as a haven for billionaires and their luxury yachts

Speaking in French shortly after his arrival, Leo condemned what he termed the widening ‘chasms between the poor and the rich’.

Leo, the first American-born pope, was greeted at the Monaco heliport by Prince Albert and Princess Charlene.

At the palace, members of the royal family stood in the courtyard waiting for Leo, the women dressed in black and with lace head coverings.

Charlene wore white — a protocol privilege granted by the Vatican to Catholic royal sovereigns when meeting popes, known in diplomatic terms as ‘le privilège du blanc’.

In his opening greeting from the palace balcony, Leo urged Monaco – which has the highest concentration of billionaires per capita in the world – to use its wealth, influence and ‘gift of smallness’ for good.

It was important, he said, ‘especially at a historical moment when the display of power and the logic of oppression are harming the world and jeopardising peace’.

Later in the cathedral, Leo urged Monaco’s Catholics to spread their faith ‘so that the life of every man and woman may be defended and promoted from conception until natural death’.

Such terms are used by the Vatican to refer to Catholic teaching opposing abortion and euthanasia.

Monaco is one of the few European countries where Catholicism is the official state religion.

A coastal playground for the rich and famous, Monaco is also renowned as much for its tax-friendly incentives and Formula 1 Grand Prix as its glamorous royal family.

The principality’s casinos – four – are only narrowly outnumbered by its five churches.

Leo’s events in Monaco were marked by all the usual protocol and pomp of a papal tour abroad.

Crowds, however, were relatively thin.

Few lined the streets as he toured the 0.8 square mile country in an open-air popemobile.

Leo was elected in May to succeed the late Pope Francis as head of the 1.4-billion-member Church.

His visit to Monaco is only his second outside Italy, but opens what is expected to be a busy year of travel.

Leo, 70, is relatively young and in good health for a pope.

He will undertake an ambitious, four-country tour of Africa in April, and is also due to make a week-long visit to Spain in June.

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