Pope Leo set off on Tuesday (June 9, 2026) for the second stop โ of his visit to Spain, flying from Madrid to Barcelona as part of a week-long tour in which he has warned that escalating conflicts have pushed the world into a โprofound crisis.
Pope Leo, who has adopted a more forceful tone recently against the direction of global leadership, also told Spain’s Parliament on Monday (June 8, 2026) โthat the “moral greatness” of any country depended on how it treated โmigrants โ and other vulnerable populations.
In a farewell speech on Tuesday before โ leaving Madrid, the first U.S. pope urged Catholics in the city to be selfless and help those in need.
“In a world that is constantly influenced by a logic of self-interest and profit … โit is important to think โand live according to a more authentic mentality,” he said.
Pope Leo was due to land in Barcelona after around an hour-long flight, before meeting the leader of the northeastern region of Catalonia and a prayer vigil with โyoung people at the Lluรญs Companys Olympic Stadium.
Sagrada Familia Tower
The centrepiece of Pope โLeo’s visit to Barcelona will be on Wednesday (June 10, 2026), when the pope will visit an abbey in nearby Montserrat and inaugurate the โ newest tower of the Sagrada Familia, the modernist basilica that has become the world’s tallest church.
The visit to the basilica is also celebrating the legacy of its โarchitect, Antoni Gaudรญ, whose designs were mocked in his lifetime but are now being praised. A fervent Catholic who died on June 10, 1926, he is on the path to Catholic sainthood.
The pope, who met six victims of sexual abuse by members of Spain’s clergy on Monday, has been criticised by some abuse survivors for his plans to visit the abbey in โMontserrat.
It was included in a 2023 report by Spain’s human rights ombudsman that estimated that โhundreds of thousands of victims had been abused by Spanish clergy over decades. In 2019, the abbot of Montserrat publicly apologised to โ victims of sexual abuse at the abbey’s school.
Pope Leo’s visit to Spain will culminate โ on Friday (June 12, 2026) in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off western Africa, where the pope will meet some 1,000 migrants who have crossed โdangerous Atlantic waters on small dinghies to reach Europe.
In his speech to Parliament on Monday, the pope said a lack of help for the โworld’s migrants was challenging “the ethical foundation of the international order”.