Pope Leo XIV, in line with his predecessor, Francis, has become a reference for progressive sectors around the world due to his message on immigration and his direct confrontation with his compatriot Donald Trump. This phenomenon, which was already very clear with the Argentine Francis, is atypical, as pontiffs are usually much more of a reference for the conservative and Catholic world, but these last two have also gained a lot of support among non-believing progressives. In this context, Pedro Sánchez and Leo XIV have agreed on a visit by the Spanish president to the Vatican to meet with the Pope shortly before he travels to Spain for a long official trip in which the government has high political expectations.
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Sánchez will travel to Rome at the end of May to see the Pontiff, according to the EFE agency and confirmed by EL PAÍS. The meeting will take place a few days before Leo XIV travels to Spain, where he plans to visit Madrid, Barcelona, and the Canary Islands, because one of the main focuses of the visit is precisely immigration.
The Spanish Church, through Cáritas, has been one of the main promoters of this extraordinary regularization process that is underway and whose deadline expires just before the Pope arrives. The regularization, heavily criticized by the PP and Vox, also has the support of the employers’ association. But for Sánchez and his government, this very active pro-immigration discourse from the Church is decisive, something that has led the far right to openly confront the bishops, with Santiago Abascal even saying they “profit” from irregular immigration.
It is the Church, which attends to many of them and helps them find work and settle in Spain, that has most pressured in favor of a regularization that Sánchez hopes will be a success and could even become an electoral asset, although for now polls show that society is very divided on this process.
That is why the government has high expectations for the Pope’s trip, which will not only focus on immigration but also on pastoral matters, with large masses, but it will have a very clear political component. Leo XIV will deliver a speech in Congress that will undoubtedly address immigration and other sensitive issues, and for this reason, the government trusts that the trip will help many Spaniards change their minds about their rejection of immigration. La Moncloa hopes that the Pontiff’s visit will also generate reflection within the right wing, since the PP, unlike VOX, has not taken the step of criticizing the Holy Father, and everything indicates that it will not do so. The government intends to exploit a certain contradiction, which it believes will be seen, to try to win a political battle that, for now, at least according to the first polls, is very difficult because the anti-immigration discourse has taken hold in important sectors of society, not just the most conservative.
That is why it is increasingly common to see Sánchez’s ministers, traditionally distant from the Church, using the Pope as a reference against the opposition. This very week, amid a clash between the government and the Canarian president, Fernando Clavijo, the government spokesperson, Elma Sáiz, said she sided with the words of Leo XXIV, who had praised the handling of the hantavirus crisis, and used it to discredit the Canarian leader, who continues to criticize the operation.
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