Pope Francis speaks on Catalonia and urges Spain to "reconcile" with "its own history"

BarcelonaMore reconciliation and less ideology: that's the recipe Pope Francis has for Spain if it wants to address the Catalan conflict. The pontiff addressed the Catalan issue in an interview with Carlos Herrera on COPE, who asked him about the subject. "National unity is fascinating, but it will never be achieved without the reconciliation of peoples", said the Pope, who urged Spain to "reconcile itself" with "its own history".

This process of reconciliation, he said, does not involve "giving up one's own positions", but it does involve "fleeing from the ideologies that impede any process" of dialogue. "The government has to take charge and carry on with history as brothers, not as enemies, and with this dishonest unconscious that makes me judge the other as an enemy", he explained in the interview, conducted in Rome and collected by Europa Press. "The most important thing at this moment in any country is that it has reconciled with its own history", he stressed. It is the first interview he has given since he underwent surgery last June.

This is not the first time that the Church has spoken out on the conflict between Catalonia and the State. In the midst of the debate on the granting of pardons to political prisoners, the Tarragona Episcopal Conference, which brings together all the Catalan bishops, advocated "dialogue" and "measures of grace" in the social and political context in Catalonia, a position that annoyed the head of the Spanish opposition and leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, who considered that instead of political prisoners "the Church has to worry about the disadvantaged: the constitutionalists who are suffering the violence and exclusion of a radical pro-independence minority".p l

Possible trip to Galicia

The Pope also said during the interview that it is possible that he will travel to Spain this year to take advantage of the Galician Xacobean Holy Year, which due to the pandemic was extended to 2022: "I promised the president of the Xunta de Galicia to think about it". The president of the Xunta, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who last June traveled to the Vatican to formally invite the Pope, has responded on Twitter that "it would be a source of pride" to have his presence. "I thank the Pope for the appreciation he always shows for our land and the Holy Year", he stressed: "The Xacobean Way is the origin of European identity and consciousness, today reconverted into challenges for the future that we share with His Holiness".