Pope Leo’s visit lays bare Spain’s tangled politics of faith and migration

As Pope Leo XIV’s sojourn to Spain comes to an end, the enactment that mightiness person been expected to invited a papal sojourn astir enthusiastically is alternatively the astir uncomfortable. Vox, the far-right enactment led by Santiago Abascal, treats Catholicism arsenic a foundational marker of Spanish identity. But Leo’s sojourn exposed the hostility betwixt that assertion and the Church’s ain teaching connected migrants, warfare and quality dignity.

The pope’s code to the Spanish parliament connected Monday did not dependable similar an endorsement of Abascal’s politics, nevertheless staunch a Catholic the Vox person claims to be. Reaching backmost to the School of Salamanca, the 16th-century question whose theologians defended the rights and dignity of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas against the logic of conquest, Leo summoned a Catholic contented that measured powerfulness by its attraction of the vulnerable. In a state present convulsed by the authorities of immigration, nary 1 could miss what benignant of authorities that past was meant to indict.

Vox embodies precisely the authorities Leo was indicting: it has called for wide deportations, rebranded arsenic “remigration”, including of undocumented migrants, immigrants’ children, immoderate calved successful Spain, and those Abascal accuses of surviving disconnected nationalist benefits oregon refusing to accommodate to Spain’s customs, and it has fought the accomplishment of unaccompanied migrant minors. Pope Leo visited the land of Gran Canaria to talk to those who person risked their lives connected the Atlantic migration way from Africa to Europe. At slightest 1,214 of them died oregon disappeared en way to the Canary Islands past year, according to the International Organization for Migration, and NGOs enactment the toll acold higher. His determination to item the plight of asylum seekers and migrants had already acceptable him astatine likelihood with the medication of US President Donald Trump, which Abascal admires. By contrast, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, whose authorities precocious opened a way for astatine slightest 500,000 undocumented migrants and asylum seekers to regularise their status, had each crushed to invited the visit.

To recognize the discourse of Pope Leo’s visit, it helps to retrieve that Spain is not the Catholic state it was a procreation ago. The authorities pollster CIS recorded astir 68 percent of Spaniards identifying arsenic Catholic a decennary ago; by the outpouring of 2025, that stock had fallen to 52.8 percent, with lone 17.3 percent describing themselves arsenic practising. And yet Spain is besides seeing a astonishing revival of Catholic individuality among Generation Z and young millennials. According to the Fundacion SM “Jovenes Espanoles 2026” survey, the stock of young Spaniards identifying arsenic Catholic has jumped from 31.6 percent to astir 45 percent successful 5 years, reversing decades of secularising trends. The displacement has tally alongside a crisp rightward crook among young voters.

Pope Leo appeared to code this caller scenery directly. At an open-air wide past Sunday successful Madrid, attended by much than a cardinal people, the American pontiff drew a enactment betwixt Christian values and far-right authorities erstwhile helium told the assemblage that “no 1 tin kneel earlier the Lord and despise their brother”.

Abascal, Vox, and these young blimpish voters indispensable person noted that Pope Leo’s governmental docket is not sympathetic to theirs. This is why, aft the beatified begetter addressed parliament, the far-right person said we “must separate betwixt speeches and applicable policy. These are the words expected of a spiritual leader.” Although Abascal is trying to minimise the pope’s message, helium knows it’s becoming harder to support the mentation of Christian values his enactment claims arsenic its own. And the party’s caller onslaught connected Spanish bishops for supporting the government’s migrant amnesty led Pope Leo to pass against the Church being instrumentalised for governmental ends.

All this could jeopardise adjacent year’s wide election. Vox is rebuilding its determination alliances with the blimpish People’s Party (PP), present reflected successful PP-Vox agreements successful Extremadura, Aragon and Castilla y Leon, and hopes to transportation that concern into nationalist powerfulness if the PP, arsenic forecast, wins. As the PP continues its confederation with Vox, which includes adopting the far-right “national priority” argumentation that favours Spaniards implicit foreign-born radical successful lodging and benefits, it mightiness besides statesman to suffer portion of the Catholic ballot it relied connected for truthful long.

Pope Leo and Sanchez look aligned connected some fronts: migration and the US-Israel warfare connected Iran, which the pope called “unjust” and the premier curate “illegal”. But if the acold close is unhappy with this visit, the Socialist Party should not presume it has gained an state successful the American pope. The Catholic Church plays a longer and much cautious crippled than enactment politicians, and has been compromise-oriented for centuries, an instinct that has served it well. There is besides a deeper calculation astatine work: arsenic Christianity loses crushed and its practitioners correspond a declining stock of the planetary population, its centre of gravity is shifting to the Global South, the precise regions overmuch of Europe’s migration comes from. The Church’s defence of migrants is truthful bound up not lone with principle, but with its ain future. But rule is 1 thing; factual governmental alignment is another.

On astir ethical issues, specified arsenic household and abortion, the Catholic Church is inactive person to Vox than to the Socialist Party. That volition not change, due to the fact that these positions remainder connected doctrine and revelation, not connected governmental convenience. Sanchez’s champion hope, then, is simply a tactical convergence with the pontiff, utilizing a favourable infinitesimal to abstracted the ballot of progressive Catholics from that of traditionalists. In “catolicisima” Spain, the Spain erstwhile imagined arsenic astir Catholic, that is already a large result.

It is striking that, successful an epoch erstwhile spiritual sentiment is nary longer communal currency, the Catholic Church remains cardinal to governmental debate, particularly successful a state similar Spain, wherever religion inactive shapes governmental identity. In a satellite wherever authorities struggles to supply a shared meaning of life, and speaks to uprooted individuals often bound lone by fleeting fears, the Church inactive offers an past consciousness of community. That is wherefore politicians connected rival sides tribunal a pope who refuses to talk arsenic 1 of them, and wherefore his words successful Madrid inevitably became political.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the authors’ ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.