One day Pope Leo XIV ate paella

They say that if we were to gather the alleged fragments of Christ's cross scattered around the world, we could make several dozen crosses. Similarly, when a new pope is appointed, a curious media machine is activated to detect whether the pontiff passed remotely near each place: the result is a list of trips, visits, and journeys long enough to fill several lifetimes. Let's look at this headline from The Provinces:"Pope Leo XIV was in Valencia in 2005, ate paella and visited the Virgin of the Forsaken." This is added to another one ofThe World, in which, of course, the center of the world is Villa y Corte: "«The Pope has friends in Madrid and came there often». Robert Prevost, the pontiff who slept next to the Bernabéu in the Colegio San Agustín." Papal influence doesn't seem to have helped the Blancos much, it must be said, but they already have Pope Florentine I. The ultras at Infovaticana drop a "Leo XIV visited the Valley of the Fallen" which has obvious political intentions. And so we could go on with headlines that place Robert Prevost in Huelva, Málaga, Pamplona and Oropesa del Mar. Not even in the ARA do we escape the fascination of proximity: "The day Leo XIV visited the Sant Roc neighborhood of Badalona."

In the end, as Prior General of the Order of Saint Augustine between 2001 and 2013, Prevost's responsibilities included overseeing Augustinian communities in several countries. He is a well-traveled Pope, as is the case with most cardinals. I suppose this abundance of news is a mix of the fascination that the Church's rites still generate, a touch of the provincialism inherent in the human species, and the current inflationary tendency to publish a thousand news stories on trending topics. At least this time we haven't had to swallow what the best Pope, the one from Madrid, had to endure.