For Spanish government, Pope Leo’s speech on immigration and war provides welcome relief

The Spanish government had high hopes for Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Spain, which comes at a particularly tense moment in an already toxic political climate. But the reality has exceeded even their most optimistic expectations, providing a political breather to the governing Socialist Party (PSOE), which is dealing with several high-profile legal probes involving individuals with close ties to the government—such as former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

In the middle of this legal storm, the Pope has been clearly demonstrating—most recently in his address to Spanish parliament on Monday—a strong support for two central pillars of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s administration: a pro-immigration position that includes a mass migrant legalization drive, and a “no to war” attitude regarding the conflict initiated by Donald Trump in Iran.

On the left-wing benches, and despite disagreements with the Catholic Church on issues like euthanasia and abortion, there was a lot of enthusiasm for the Pope’s clear rejection of the “national priority” being negotiated by the mainstream conservative Popular Party (PP) and the far-right Vox to form regional governing coalitions. The Pontiff’s statements on this matter specifically alluded to the term used by Vox to defend prioritizing Spaniards over migrants for welfare services.

“Wherever a person is discriminated against because of their national, ethnic, religious, or linguistic origin, or because of their economic and social status, the fundamental principle of the equal dignity of all human beings is violated,” said the Pope on Monday.

We’re going to spend a long time reminding the PP that the Pope agrees with us

Government source

The PP and Vox did not take this as a rebuke of their politics, however, and PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo later said that he endorses Leo XIV’s entire speech “from A to Z.” Feijóo met with the Pontiff, who is on a weeklong visit to Spain, and called him a “moral beacon.”

The government, on the other hand, is already preparing to use select phrases from the Pope in future political discussions with the PP. “We’re going to spend a long time reminding the PP that the Pope agrees with us,” a source at La Moncloa, the seat of government, noted.

Canaries and Catalonia

And the government hopes to make even more of the pontiff’s trip, which initially arose from the late Francis’ desire to learn first-hand about the reality of immigration in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off western Africa that has been a longtime destination for migrants en route to Europe. Sánchez will accompany Pope Leo to the Canaries, setting the scene for images that are sure to clash with the anti-immigration policies of the PP and Vox.

Leo XIV is also set to visit the northeastern region of Catalonia to inaugurate the Sagrada Familia, the famous basilica designed by Antoni Gaudí and the largest unfinished Catholic church in the world, now in its final stages of construction. The government sees this as the perfect opportunity to showcase the return to normality in this region nearly 10 years after the independence movement that caused a national crisis.

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