The Pope will visit Barcelona and celebrate Mass to inaugurate the Tower of Jesus Christ at the Sagrada Familia. As confirmed by the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), Leo XIV will arrive in Spain between June 6 and 12, "accepting the invitation of King Felipe VI and the Church to Spain." Fifteen years after the last papal visit to the country—Benedict XVI visited in 2011, but Francis died last April without having done so—Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni has confirmed that Leo XIV will visit Barcelona, ​​Madrid, and the Canary Islands (specifically, Tenerife and Gran Canaria). Although the dates and schedule for each trip have not yet been finalized, both the CEE and the Catalan government (Generalitat) assume that the Pope will arrive first in Madrid and then visit the Catalan capital on June 9 and 10. The reason for the Pope's visit to Barcelona will be the inauguration of "the new and tallest tower of the Sagrada Familia," on the centenary of the death of "the brilliant architect who dreamed of the basilica and began its construction, Antoni Gaudí," who passed away on June 10, 192. In statements to Ràdio Estel, the Archbishop of Barcelona, ​​Cardinal Juan José Omella, expressed his satisfaction with Pope Leo XIV's visit to Barcelona: "It is a joy, and we thank the Pope for inaugurating the tower of Jesus Christ, which is the tallest of all the churches in the world." The President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, also described the Pope's visit this June as "great news" for the Christian community and Catalan society as a whole, and thanked Leo XIV for his "gesture" in wanting to participate in the events planned for the centenary of Gaudí's death. "We will receive him with open arms," ​​he asserted, adding that the new pontiff represents "universal human values" such as solidarity. In this regard, Isla referred to a visit on June 9th, confirming that the religious authority (CEE) and the Balearic Government are aware that the trip to Barcelona will take place on June 9th and 10th.

After a torrential downpour, a single beacon illuminates the runway of the military airport, where some two hundred select individuals await the arrival of Pope Leo XIV under a tent that casts little shade. On one side, people crowd together; on the other, photographers search for the best angles, while the military band rehearses and the dignitaries march past. The sound of the Vatican plane is heard before it is seen. The crowd, phones in hand, moves between nerves and anticipation. When the twenty-gun salute rings out, more than one person jumps in surprise before looking back up at the sky, half-smiling and with a racing heart.

The President of the Generalitat (Catalan Government), Salvador Illa, met this Wednesday morning with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican. The meeting, according to sources within the Government, took place at 8:30 a.m. and lasted half an hour. He was in a private audience at the Vatican, which is why—the Generalitat (Catalan Government) emphasizes—Illa is "the first institutional representative of Spain to be received" by this Pope, who was elected as the new pontiff four months ago following the death of Pope Francis. "It was a very moving conversation for me," Salvador Illa stated after the meeting in statements to the media. Also participating in the audience were the Minister of Justice, Ramon Espadaler, and the Spanish ambassador to the Holy See, Isabel Celaá.

More than four months have passed since the white smoke from the Sistine Chapel announced the election of a new pope, and even today, few in the Vatican dare to draw a more or less accurate profile of Leo XIV. American journalist Elise Ann Allen, Rome correspondent for the Catholic newspaper I creak, he does it in the book Leo XIV: citizen of the world, missionary of the 21st century, which includes the first interview with Robert Prevost since his election to the Chair of Sant Pere.

I have had the grace of meeting Pope Leo, and in his presence I have discovered something more than a shepherd: I have seen a man who listens with the ear of his heart, who speaks with the serenity of one who prays, and whose gaze embraces like a sacrament. His prudence is not a fearful silence, but a wisdom that discerns and dares to point the way. His commitment is not limited to diplomatic gestures: it is a radical commitment to the Gospel, to justice, to peace, and to the care of the Earth, our common home entrusted to us and today in agony.

For centuries, the popes chose the village of Castel Gandolfo to spend the summer because it was cooler than torrid Rome. The first to break this tradition was Francis, but it seems that Leo XIV has decided to resume it, something that its residents await with enthusiasm and curiosity, as will the pilgrims who will follow him, reactivating tourism and local commerce.

Politics often provides strange traveling companions. And if you don't believe it, ask the Pope Leo XIV, who for his proclamation Mass filled St. Peter's Square at the Vatican to the rafters with 200,000 people, including world political leaders of all kinds of attire. Curiously, however, among all the pontiff's colorful guests, few people enjoyed a privilege related to the dress code, which is always monochromatic black when the papal act is solemn. Specifically, these privileged people were the queens of "Catholic countries," who have the privilege of being able to wear white before a pope, an ancient right that surely perhaps they no longer care in the least about, but which the gossip media finds joyful on a workday in which the main story consists solely of explaining something. so horny like a mass.

There was a time when the Mass with which a new pope officially began his pontificate was called the "enthronement," referring to the figure of a monarch, an absolute king, which also characterizes the leader of the Catholic Church. Currently, this term is no longer used, but in practice, the solemn ceremony that marks the beginning of the papacy remains charged with symbolism. Before 150 international delegations and nearly 200,000 faithful, Leo XIV received this Sunday the pallium and the Fisherman's Ring, symbols of the authority of the successor of Peter, and He launched a message in favor of a united Church that acts as a "leaven" for a reconciled world..

This week, a slew of people dressed as the Pope of Rome have been spotted marching through downtown New York City, heading toward Madison Square Garden. The reason? Fans of the NBA's New York Knicks are convinced the new pope has blessed them. They believe the election of Robert Prevost as pontiff will lead them to their first NBA title in decades. Why? Because Prevost attended Villanova University, the same university that produced three of the team's best players: Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, and Mikal Bridges. All three starred for the Villanova Wildcats and were crowned NCAA champions in 2016. Prevost then tweeted an article praising this milestone because he follows the Wildcats' results.

Tomorrow, Thursday, May 15, marks the 134th anniversary of the publication of Leo XIII's encyclical. Rerum novarum (On New Realities). It remains the basis of the Catholic Church's social doctrine and underlines the idea of human dignity and the need to combat the misery and poverty that plagued most workers of his time. The document's objective was to overcome both the depredations of the savage capitalism of his time and the violence then associated with revolutionary movements, and especially with anarchism. Let us remember that we are talking about 1891; the Lyceum bombing, for example, occurred in 1893. The world of Leo XIII was the height of colonialism and industrialization; that of Leo XIV was that of globalization and the second digital revolution, that of AI. These are two comparable realities, to be sure, although great care must be taken not to invoke certain anachronisms. What we now perceive as progress, or as regression, was often interpreted in a very different way in their time. In my little library there is one History of the Popes In four volumes published in Paris in 1841. The author is Amédée de Hertault. They are preceded by a long 64-page introduction by Pierre-Sébastien Laurentie (1793-1876)—in fact, it's a separate essay. Laurentie was an anti-modern, anti-liberal, and legitimist French writer. I believe he was the most reactionary thinker of his time, and undoubtedly the spiritual father of Gobineau and Joseph de Maistre, although he also had a significant influence on Balzac, for example. Reading this introduction, one can see that certain things that attract our attention today went completely unnoticed at that time, and vice versa.

"So you've seen all the Rome ritual on TV?!" Some of my friends, most of them agnostics and republicans, are amazed when I explain that I'm a ritual junkie and that I never miss the election of the Pope, or any royal wedding or funeral, or coronation.

Pope Leo XIV made a firm defense of freedom of expression and of the press and recognized the "courage" of journalists who work in adverse places or circumstances, "even at the cost of their lives." Before thousands of journalists at the first audience of his pontificate, the Pope expressed "the Church's solidarity with journalists imprisoned for seeking and reporting the truth" and called for their release. "Only informed people can make free decisions," the American pontiff affirmed, precisely at a time when the government of his home country is engaged in an open struggle against the media.

Since Thursday afternoon since we have a pope And no: none of the predictions or the occasional Vatican experts' predictions were correct in predicting that the chosen one would be Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago native but a Peruvian national. In fact, they didn't even come close. And no, the Church hasn't initiated the counter-reformation, as the vast majority of the prescient predictions predicted, nor has it fallen into the hands of the ultra-Catholic sectors that, according to some, had an unbeatable offensive prepared. And no, Pope Francis must not have been as disorganized or as idiotic as some painted him, because the conclave has given continuity to his doctrinal, pastoral, and political legacy. If this had happened after the pontificate of a conservative pope, a crowd of analysts with their eyes rolled back would be talking about the subtlety of a two-thousand-year-old tradition of diplomacy, etc. However, if it happens when the time comes to hand over the reins to a progressive pope, it turns out to be a fluke. The unwritten law of automatic lowering of appraisals when progressives reach—or maintain—levels of power is therefore once again imposed.

When on Thursday the cardinal Robert Prevost stepped out onto the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica As the 267th pope, Chiclayo, in northern Peru, exploded with joy and disbelief. This city, the fifth largest in the country with just under 800,000 inhabitants, was little known until last week, when many people had never even heard of it. For days now, the only thing talked about in Chiclayo is this.

Pope Leo XIV has launched an appeal against war in his first prayer of the Regina Caeli This Sunday at noon in front of thousands of faithful gathered in the Vatican's Piazza Sant'Pere. Quoting Pope Francis, the American pontiff denounced the "current dramatic scenario of a Third World War in pieces" and firmly appealed to world leaders: "Never again war!"

"Peace be with you all." So the pontificate of Leo XIV began. Standing on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, the new spiritual leader of 1.4 billion Catholics launched a plea for peace in his first address to the world. "An unarmed peace," he urged. Despite his affable face and almost trembling voice, the new pope's political program was already evident in his speech. In these turbulent times, the American pontiff's priority will be to achieve an end to conflicts. An ambitious goal that will test the leadership of Francis's successor.

Most early analyses of Leo XIV suggest that the new pope will continue Bergoglio's reforms and that the more conservative sector of the conclave has been severely scalded. At the risk of being wrong, forgive me for disagreeing.

So many good words uttered from the Vatican in recent weeks—starting with the latest from Pope Francis—heard globally, and so little echo in the political sphere. new pope, Leo XIV, speaking after bridges and peace on their first outing on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, and the following day one of the first news items on the news was The military parade, with 11,000 troops, in Moscow's Red SquareThe message consisted of a display of equipment, the martial prowess of the troops, and Vladimir Putin accompanied by Chinese Prime Minister Xi Jinping, next to the Kremlin Wall. The purpose of the event was to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, but Putin turned the whole thing—including the international guests—into a personal propaganda event. In parallel, another scene showed Donald Trump expressing his respect for Pope Francis in the Oval Office, while his advisors, who surrounded him, burst out laughing, perhaps because they remembered his head. disguised as a pontiff by artificial intelligence a few days before.

Pope Leo XIII devoted much of his term to combating the so-called "Americanist heresy," a liberal Catholic movement that emerged in the United States that embraced the separation of church and state (which the Vatican rejected) and prioritized evangelization over dogmatism in the 20th century. The formerly powerful diocese of Munich, with 1.7 million members, had only one seminarian at 99 in 2022. the country that contributed the most money, in the form of a grain of sand, in the Catholic Church. Now the country that contributes the most annually, with more than 10 million dollars (a similar sum in euros), is the United States. Both American continents represent almost half of the world's Catholicism. And the new pope, who has decided to resume the name of the anti-American pope and call himself Leo XIV, is American.

There are moments in history that taste of spring. The beginning of this new pontificate is one of them. With hearts aflame and eyes open, we recognize that the Holy Spirit has once again surprised us. He has lifted up the Church, set us on our journey, and revealed that hope is not a naive dream, but a force that uplifts peoples, keeps the weary moving forward, and lights the light in the midst of darkness.