Pope Leo urges Monaco, tax haven of billionaires, to help needy

Pope Leo on Saturday made a day trip to Monaco, a tax-free microstate on the French Riviera known as a haven for billionaires and their luxury yachts, and urged its residents to share their wealth and help those in need.

"In God's eyes, nothing is received in vain!" the pope told crowds waving yellow flags under a brilliant sun. "Every good placed in our hands... bears an intrinsic need not to be held back, but to be shared, so that everyone's life may be better."

Leo is the first pope in nearly five centuries to visit the wealthy Mediterranean enclave. The Vatican said he wanted to show that small countries can make an outsized impact on the world stage.

He arrived after a 90-minute helicopter ride from the Vatican and met first with Prince Albert, Monaco's head of state and son of the late Hollywood star Grace Kelly.

The pope appeared to reiterate his message that the wealthy should help those less fortunate in his official gift to Albert.

He gave the prince a colourful artwork created by the Vatican's mosaic studio, an image of St. Francis of Assisi, a 13th-century son of a prosperous Italian merchant who renounced his inheritance to help the poor.

One Monaco resident among crowds greeting Leo outside Albert's official residence said he hoped the pope would help bring people across the world together amid the ongoing Iran war.

"At the moment there is a lot of tension," said Jean Claude Haddad, 60. "He could reunite people... he brings people together."

CROWDS RELATIVELY THIN DURING POPE'S VISIT

The second smallest state in the world after the Vatican, and one of the last countries with Catholicism as the state religion, Monaco has the highest concentration of billionaires per capita in the world.

In his speech at Albert's residence, Leo urged Monaco's residents to "put your prosperity at the service of law and justice".

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 2.08 square kilometre (0.8 square mile) country in an open-air popemobile.

In a meeting with local Catholics, the pope appeared to praise Albert's decision last year to veto a Monaco bill that would have legalized abortion, firmly opposed by the Church.

Leo urged the Catholics to continue speaking up "in defense of the human person", using Church terminology often invoked to oppose abortion and the death penalty.

Albert's 2025 veto was largely symbolic, as abortion is a constitutional right in surrounding France.

Leo, the first U.S. pope, 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.

-Additional reporting by Marco Trujillo; Editing by Jan Harvey/Reuters