The Barcelona City Council will grant free use of the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium for a prayer vigil on Tuesday, June 9, on the occasion of the visit of Pope Leo XIV. “The Barcelona City Council, recognizing the exceptional uniqueness of the visit, has formalized a collaboration agreement with the Archdiocese of Barcelona and the Generalitat of Catalonia (currently in process), in order to regulate the co-organization of the events linked to the pope’s visit to the city, in line with the general criteria for managing city events,” municipal sources explained.
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The City Council has indicated that “within this framework, the transfer of the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium has been agreed upon as a suitable infrastructure to guarantee the necessary capacity, the safety of attendees, and the proper development of an event of very high organizational complexity.”
Sources also explained that, “since this is an exceptional event that does not pursue any profit-making purpose and is part of a State event with a clear institutional dimension, the waiver of the usage fee for the space has been considered fully justified.”
All this “in accordance with municipal practice and the criteria for managing public spaces and municipal facilities, as has happened in other cases such as the Catalonia-Palestine football match or the ‘Barcelona with Valencia’ concert, among others,” they added.
The decision has been criticized by Barcelona en Comú, whose councilor Guille López tweeted on X: “Barcelona has more urgent priorities than allocating public money to the pope’s visit. If the criterion is public interest and international projection to justify the transfer of the Lluís Companys stadium, it could also have been applied in the case of FC Barcelona.”
The City Council has argued that the visit of Leo XIV constitutes, “beyond its religious nature – a competence proper to the Catholic Church – an event of utmost public and general interest,” due to the institutional significance, international projection, and social, cultural, and symbolic impact it has for the city of Barcelona and for Catalonia as a whole.
“The visit will involve the presence of thousands of people from local, national, and international spheres with the attendance of authorities and wide coverage by national and international media, reinforcing the image of Barcelona as an open, plural city committed to dialogue and with a long tradition of hospitality,” they maintained.
Robert Prevost will arrive in Barcelona on Tuesday, June 9, after passing through Madrid and before going to the Canary Islands, where he will end his trip to Spain. On the same day in the Catalan capital, he will preside over a prayer at the Cathedral and a prayer vigil at the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium.
On Wednesday, June 10, he will visit the parish of Sant Agustí, in the Raval neighborhood, to meet with the Augustinian community, the order to which he belongs, and will preside over a mass at the Sagrada Familia basilica, whose tower of Jesus Christ he will bless, coinciding with the centenary of the death of architect Antoni Gaudí.
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