The Pope will pronounce, in a joint session with the Senate, on June 8, during, as the Holy See has officially confirmed this afternoon. The Vatican has finally made public the program of the visit, proposed in November by the Spanish bishops and announced in February, and in this way has finished corroborating this historic parliamentary session. Leo XIV is the third pope to travel to Spain, after John Paul II, who went five times between 1982 and 2003; and Benedict XVI, who did so three times, the last in 2011.
In any case, it is the first time that a Pontiff will speak in the Spanish Cortes, and he will do so at a time of clash between the Spanish Church and Vox, as a result of the position of the bishops in defense of immigration. Leo XIV himself warned the Spanish episcopal leadership in November, in their first meeting in the Vatican, according to EL PAÍS. This Monday, the Holy See irregularities of the Government.
Immigration will be an issue present in the trip, with a clear social imprint, such as proximity to the poorest and neediest. The Pope is going to the Canary Islands precisely for that reason, and there he will visit the Arguineguín pier, a symbol of the migratory drama. He will also meet with migrants at a reception center in Tenerife. Also in Madrid, he will go to a house for homeless people in Carabanchel. In Barcelona, he will meet the inmates of the Brians 1 prison and will also go to the parish of San Agustí in the Raval neighborhood.
However, after the publication of the program, another of the points of interest of the trip still remains a mystery: there is no trace of a possible meeting with victims of clerical pedophilia, although that does not mean that it will not occur, since on other occasions it has been held even if it was not initially included in the official agenda.
Francis barely commented on the scandal in Spain, which emerged in 2018 due to the investigations of this newspaper, and Leo XIV has not yet done so, although he has already met with victims from other countries in the Vatican and in Peru. According to , at this moment there are 1,621 accused and at least 3,100 victims in Spain. The Spanish Church has never given clear data and for years has denied the problem.
The Pope will visit Madrid, Barcelona, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Tenerife. Most of the planned events had already been leaked, to the annoyance of the Vatican, as there has been great pressure in the cities and dioceses involved in the trip to force the agenda, in addition to the understandable expectation. However, until the Holy See officially announced the program, nothing could be taken for granted.
The trip plan adheres to the forecasts. The Pontiff will hold a meeting with the Kings as soon as he arrives in Madrid, on Saturday the 6th, at the Zarzuela Palace. Then he will meet with authorities and civil society at the Royal Palace and, in the afternoon, he will visit the Cedia 24 Horas shelter for homeless people, in the Carabanchel neighborhood. At night, there will be a massive meeting with young people in the Plaza de Lima.
On Sunday, the 7th, he will preside over the Corpus Christi mass in the Plaza de Cibeles. In the afternoon you will attend a great meeting with the world of culture, art, economy and sport in the Movistar Arena pavilion. On Monday, June 8, he will first meet with the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, at the nunciature, and then he will go to the Congress of Deputies, in a historic joint session of the Cortes. The stopover in the Spanish capital will end in the afternoon with a visit to the Almudena Cathedral and, in the evening, with a big match at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium.
On the 9th he will travel to Barcelona and that night he will preside over a vigil at the Olympic stadium. The next day he will visit the inmates of the Brians 1 prison and then he will travel to the Montserrat monastery, where he will eat with the Benedictine community. In the afternoon he will go to the Sagrada Familia, to inaugurate the temple. In the afternoon there will be another moment of a marked social nature with the visit to the church of San Agustí, in Raval.
On the 11th you will fly to Gran Canaria, where you will visit the Arguineguín pier, a symbol of the migratory crisis on the islands. In the afternoon he will celebrate a mass mass at the Las Palmas stadium. On the 12th he will be in Tenerife and the Las Raíces migrant reception center will attend. In the afternoon, you will return to Rome.
At the same time that the Vatican made the program public, this afternoon, the Spanish bishops called a press conference to expand on the details of the visit. However, previously, at an informative breakfast with journalists organized by the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), its president, Luis Argüello, has spoken about some issues, such as the Pope’s visit to Congress: “If this visit to the nation’s Parliament is confirmed, as we hope, definitively, it also has, not only from the Spanish point of view, but from the European and global point of view, a great importance, as the interventions of Benedict XVI in various parliamentary or academic forums and also some of the “Pope Francis, I think of his intervention in Strasbourg, for example,” Miguel Jiménez reports.
The president of the bishops explained that “the Congress and Senate tables have unanimously requested, they have invited Pope Leo” to visit the Cortes. “From there, what can happen? That a parliamentary group decides not to participate or a parliamentary group that decides to participate, decides in some way to express… Well, that no longer depends on the Pope, or even on the table itself. Because in this sense, in what may be the parliamentary arc, some groups may be bothered or uncomfortable by some of the expressions and others by another,” he said, giving immigration and abortion as examples.
“I frankly believe that the Pope’s own words, logically, will promote everything that has to do with dialogue, with encounter and with not losing sight of the horizon of the common good. And today the common good does not only have national characteristics, but it also has international characteristics, since we live in a global world,” he commented. “My wish is that the way our senators and our congressmen and our deputies position themselves is good, of someone who receives in a hospitable manner someone who comes to bring a message that will undoubtedly have to do with dialogue, with unity, with peace.”
Argüello has also assured that it is possible for the Pope to meet with victims of clerical pedophilia, although it does not appear in the official program: “Usually, when these meetings have occurred mainly due to visits by Pope Francis, throughout his many trips, these types of meetings, like others, have not been meetings that were on the agenda, because they have been meetings that have taken place in a more private way and then once they have taken place it has been made public that the meeting has been held. produced.”
The president of the EEC has been very cautious when it comes to clarifying whether this meeting will take place or not, a symptom of the ambiguity with which the scandal is still being managed in Spain today, and of the lack of fluid communication with the Vatican in this regard: “If I say now that we have made this proposal and then it is not carried out, it would be said: well, the Pope did not want to do it. And if I say that we have not proposed it, but the Pope does, it would seem that the Pope distances himself from the position of the bishops. It does not make sense. The possibilities of various meetings of the Pope in the times that he has free in his residence of the nunciature or in other places, what the Pope wants to do, that depends on his own decision and the previous dialogues that may have been held, but it is not up to us to confirm or deny that the meetings will take place.
At the EEC press conference, the Archbishop of Madrid, José Cobo, hinted that the meeting with victims of pedophilia is planned, although it is not yet official. He recalled that “the Pope has a list of private meetings,” but that it will be the Vatican that “will announce it.”
