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Aboard his papal flight en route to Spain on Saturday, the first American-born pope, Leo XIV, opened up to reporters with a mix of serious reflection on his pastoral mission and lighthearted quips about unexpected cultural and sporting topics ahead of his seven-nation tour.

His arrival in Madrid this weekend coincides with two back-to-back concerts from global Puerto Rican music superstar Bad Bunny, who is currently touring across Spain. When the pope was asked about anecdotal reports of a growing spiritual hunger among young Spanish people, he acknowledged the massive cultural draw of the Bad Bunny shows in good humor. He admitted that if young people were forced to choose between the pop star’s concert and an event with the pontiff, most would opt for the music. “If they are confronted with the question ‘Do you want to go see Bad Bunny or do you want to go to see the pope?’ I think many will see Bad Bunny,” Leo told reporters. “But I think there will also be a few here to see the pope. And that says something, you know.”

Leo, who grew up in Chicago, said he recognized that many young adults across contemporary Europe are grappling with a widespread sense of emptiness and a lack of purpose in daily life. He expressed hope that his week-long tour across Spain would help spark a new spiritual awakening, reaching those who are open to exploring faith amid the noise of modern life.

The tour, kicking off Saturday in Madrid, will next carry Leo to Barcelona before wrapping up with a stop on the Canary Islands. The pastoral trip comes at a fraught moment for Spain, which is currently deeply divided by bitter political divides and fresh scandals that have shaken both the national government and the Catholic Church in the country. Leo’s core mission for the visit is to deliver a unifying message, seeking to bridge divides in a nation where the Church carries a long and complex historical legacy in an increasingly secular society.

Beyond matters of faith and church leadership, reporters pressed Leo on two high-profile sporting topics close to his personal background. First, he was asked about a recent vote by the Chicago Bears board of directors, which gave the green light this week to move forward with plans to relocate the franchise from Chicago to a new proposed stadium in Hammond, Indiana. When asked if he had any words of comfort for heartbroken Chicago fans, the pontiff joked that the issue falls far outside his area of authority. “That’s out of my pay (scale),” he quipped.

Turning to Spanish soccer, Leo was asked to pick a side between the country’s two most iconic and bitter rivals: Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. The pope demured lightly, noting that as the universal leader of the Catholic Church, he supports all teams. But he revealed his personal allegiance ties back to his civilian life, saying “Prevost is Real Madrid” in a nod to his birth name before being elected to the papacy. He also confirmed he would throw his support behind the United States men’s national team in the upcoming FIFA World Cup.

VATICAN CITY — When Pope Leo XIV embarks on his seven-day apostolic journey to Spain starting June 6, he will step into a nation once defined by its unwavering Catholic identity, now grappling with plummeting religious participation, deep political polarization, and ongoing reckoning with the Catholic Church’s decades-old clergy sexual abuse scandals. This marks the first papal visit to Spain in 15 years, the last coming from Pope Benedict XVI for 2011’s World Youth Day in Madrid, and it will unfold across three distinct stops, each with a targeted mission that intersects with Spain’s most pressing contemporary challenges.

Ahead of the trip, the Vatican confirmed late Friday that Leo will make space to meet with survivors of clergy sexual abuse during his visit, a mandatory inclusion for modern papal travel as the global Church continues to confront the fallout of abuse and institutional cover-up. Spain’s national Catholic hierarchy has only recently begun to acknowledge the full scope of abuse committed by clergy across the country over generations, a reckoning that has further eroded public trust in the institution amid already accelerating secularization.

The first leg of the journey, held in Madrid from June 6 to 8, will make history in its own right: Leo will become the first pope ever to address a joint session of Las Cortes Generales, Spain’s national parliament. Papal addresses to foreign legislatures are extremely rare; the last such occurrence came in 2015, when Pope Francis spoke to a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, and such speeches often rank among the most high-profile addresses of a pontificate.

Leo will take the podium in a legislature deeply fractured along ideological lines. Spain’s ruling Socialist Party, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, is currently mired in a major political crisis driven by a string of high-profile corruption scandals, while the far-right party Vox has mounted fierce criticism of the government’s liberal migration policies. Beyond his parliamentary address, Leo will also meet with King Felipe VI and the Spanish royal family, and lead an ecumenical prayer vigil for young people in Madrid, a gathering that intentionally echoes the 2011 World Youth Day that brought Benedict XVI to the capital.

Notably, the pope’s visit to Madrid will overlap with a much-anticipated pair of concerts from global Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny, part of the artist’s 10-show European run. The dual high-profile visits have prompted major traffic disruptions and security closures across large swathes of the Spanish capital, drawing widespread media attention to the unlikely overlap of the world’s most prominent religious leader and one of pop music’s biggest stars.

From June 9 to 10, the papal trip shifts to Catalonia’s capital Barcelona, where the centerpiece of the visit will mark the 100th anniversary of the death of legendary Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, a native son of the region whose work is already on the path to sainthood in the Catholic Church. Leo will celebrate open-air Mass at Gaudí’s iconic unfinished masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia basilica, and formally inaugurate the site’s new central spire, the Tower of Jesus Christ, a construction milestone that has earned Sagrada Familia the title of the world’s tallest church. While Gaudí’s sainthood cause will be a backdrop to the visit, the Vatican has confirmed no formal announcement on his canonization is scheduled. Leo will also make a pastoral stop at the Our Lady of Montserrat abbey, a site of deep spiritual and cultural significance for Catalonia, located on a sacred mountain outside the city.

The final leg of the visit, held on the Canary Islands from June 11 to 12, fulfills a long-held priority of Pope Francis, who had long desired to visit the archipelago to minister to migrants who cross dangerous Atlantic routes from North Africa to reach European soil. Located far closer to the African coast than mainland Spain, the Canary Islands have long been the primary arrival point for irregular migration to Spain. Migrant arrivals peaked at nearly 47,000 in 2024, though numbers have dropped sharply to just over 2,000 in the first four months of 2026.

Leo will visit two of the archipelago’s seven main islands over two days, meeting with recently arrived migrants and the humanitarian organizations that provide life-saving care and support to new arrivals. The stop comes as the Sánchez government has broken with the dominant policy trend across Europe and the United States, announcing plans to grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants already living and working in Spain. Sánchez has framed the policy as an economic necessity, noting that legal migration will help offset Spain’s aging population and chronically low birth rate that have strained the country’s labor market.

During the visit, Pope Leo is widely expected to double down on core papal priorities that cut across each of his three stops: calls for unity in a deeply polarized political landscape, a push for global peace amid ongoing armed conflicts around the world, a message of radical welcome for migrants, and words of hope for young Spaniards navigating the rapid changes brought by the artificial intelligence revolution.

This Associated Press religion coverage is produced through a collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP retains sole editorial responsibility for all content.

VATICAN CITY — A new chapter in Vatican-European relations opens this weekend as Pope Leo XIV launches a week-long historical visit to Spain, a journey that will place the first American pontiff at the heart of a nation grappling with political upheaval, a decades-long Catholic credibility crisis, and shifting religious identity across modern Europe.

The visit, the first papal trip to Spain in 15 years, marks a deliberate shift in papal outreach. Unlike Pope Francis, who prioritized smaller, far-flung Catholic communities over Europe’s traditional Christian heartlands, Leo is turning his attention back to the continent, which is currently roiled by multiple overlapping crises: the ongoing fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rising tensions stemming from the U.S.-Israeli conflict in Iran, and widespread public anxiety over the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence. Ahead of the Spain trip, Leo has already made short visits to Monaco and San Marino this year, with a four-day trip to France scheduled for September, all part of his push to spread a message of peace, unity, and universal human dignity across the continent.

Leo’s visit will kick off Saturday in Madrid, where he will receive an official welcome from King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, Spain’s Catholic monarchs. The first day will conclude with a prayer vigil drawing thousands of young people, many of whom will experience seeing a pope in their home country for the very first time. In a acknowledgment of the ongoing clergy sexual abuse scandal that continues to hang over the global Catholic Church, the Vatican confirmed late Friday that Leo will meet with survivors of abuse during his visit. Spain’s Catholic hierarchy has only recently begun to confront decades of widespread abuse and institutional cover-ups in what was once one of Europe’s most devoutly Catholic nations, making this meeting a long-awaited step for survivors and church reformers alike.

The undisputed highlight of the Madrid leg of the trip will come Monday, when Leo becomes the first pope in history to address Spain’s bicameral national legislature, the Las Cortes Generales. No previous pope, including St. John Paul II, who visited Spain five times, and Benedict XVI, who traveled there three times, has ever addressed the national parliament. Papal addresses to national legislatures are rare events, and they often stand as defining moments of a pontificate. This milestone comes as Spain’s legislature faces extreme political polarization: the ruling Socialist Party led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is currently reeling from a string of high-profile corruption scandals. Opposition parties, including the center-right Popular Party and far-right Vox, have repeatedly called for Sánchez to step down ahead of scheduled 2027 elections, and have harshly criticized his government’s progressive migration policies.

Madrid has already been overtaken by papal visit fever: Leo’s image covers subway cars, billboards, and metro station advertisements across the capital. Souvenir shops are stocking custom posters, magnets, and other papal memorabilia, while local bakeries are rolling out limited-edition papal-themed cakes and pastries. The pontiff will share the spotlight this weekend, however, with Puerto Rican global music superstar Bad Bunny, who is scheduled to perform two shows of his 10-concert Madrid residency during Leo’s visit. While small protests are expected over the trip’s estimated 15 million euro ($17.2 million) price tag, the parliamentary address still represents a landmark moment for Spain’s Catholic Church, which has been rebuilding its reputation after decades of crisis rooted in the nation’s turbulent modern history.

Shaped by brutal anticlerical violence during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War, the church has more recently faced a severe credibility crisis following widespread revelations of clergy sexual abuse and institutional cover-ups. Spain’s religious landscape has shifted dramatically since the end of Francisco Franco’s 1939-1975 dictatorship. Franco, a devout Catholic who framed his rule as a religious crusade against anticlerical leftist, anarchist, and secular movements, left a church that counted 90% of Spaniards as Catholic. After the transition to democracy, however, that number has plummeted to just 55% in 2025, according to polling from Spain’s state public opinion agency, and only 19% of those identifying as Catholic report attending Mass regularly.

Despite decades of growing secularization across Europe, sociologists tracking Spanish religious attitudes say there are early signs of renewed interest in spirituality — particularly among young Spaniards. Narciso Michavila Núñez, president of polling firm GAD3, noted that recent surveys have detected a newfound openness to faith among Generation Z Spaniards, a shift highlighted by the massive commercial success of Spanish pop star Rosalía’s overtly spiritual hit album *Lux*. “God is not just a symbolic tattoo in Spanish society anymore,” Michavila said, ahead of the pope’s visit.

After wrapping up events in Madrid, Leo will travel to Barcelona midweek, where he will celebrate Mass at the iconic Sagrada Familia basilica to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of the basilica’s legendary architect Antoni Gaudí. While Gaudí is currently under consideration for sainthood, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni confirmed no announcement about his canonization is planned during the visit. The Mass will also mark the official inauguration of the basilica’s new central Tower of Jesus Christ; the completion of the spire earlier this year earned Sagrada Familia the title of the tallest church in the world.

Leo will close out his trip with a two-day stop in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the coast of West Africa that has become a key entry point for migrants crossing the Atlantic from West Africa. A legacy of Pope Francis, who made outreach to migrants and refugees a core priority of his papacy, the stop will see Leo meet with migrants and representatives of humanitarian organizations that provide care to new arrivals. He is also scheduled to lay a wreath in the Atlantic Ocean from the Port of Las Palmas, which earned the infamous nickname “Dock of Shame” in 2020 when thousands of migrants were forced to sleep in the open for weeks during a sudden spike in arrivals.

Leo has continued Francis’s legacy of prioritizing migrant advocacy, repeatedly calling for dignified treatment of migrants in his native United States. For migrants already living in Spain, the visit carries profound meaning. “For those of us who are immigrants with family far from home, having someone as important as the pope come here is truly something extraordinary,” said Constantina Nchama, an Equatorial Guinean migrant living in Madrid, in the days ahead of the visit. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment, and I am so very excited.”

The trip comes as Spain’s Socialist government has broken with broader trends in Europe and the U.S. by announcing plans to grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants already living and working in the country. Sánchez has framed the policy as an economic necessity for Spain, which faces a rapidly aging workforce and persistently low birth rates.