A week on from the first apostolic visit to Spain in more than a decade, a great deal has happened in the life of the Church. Cardinal Camillo Ruini, one of the most respected churchmen of his generation, has died. The Holy Father has addressed the situation with the Society of Saint Pius X in off-the-cuff remarks. Details of the June consistory have been leaked.

But despite the unusually busy week, the aftermath of the trip can still be felt. The Holy Father used his Wednesday General Audience to reflect on the “warmth” of the reception he received, and the themes he brought to Spain are still being discussed across the country. The trip, and the reaction that followed, offered several insights into both Pope Leo’s pontificate and the state of the Church in Spain.

The first is that Pope Leo has the ability to speak with clarity on matters of faith and morals without sitting comfortably in any political camp. Spain is currently under a particularly strong strain of progressivism, with Pedro Sánchez’s socialist government aggressively separating the country from its Catholic past and attacking the sanctity of life, notably through the introduction of assisted suicide. 

Pope Leo appeared entirely at ease using his speech to the Spanish Parliament, the first by a pontiff, to address politicians’ treatment of the vulnerable. He asked: “Can a community that casts into the shadows the unborn child, the elderly, the sick, those who suffer in silence, or those who depend entirely on the care of others be called fully just?”

In case the point was not clear enough, the pontiff also told the politicians that “every human life must be recognised and safeguarded from conception to its natural end, in every circumstance of its existence.” It made for uncomfortable listening in a country which, less than a month earlier, had been scandalised that the government’s commitment to assisted suicide had resulted in the death of Noelia Castillo, a 25 year old disabled survivor of sexual abuse. 

When the pontiff turned to migration, he adopted a tone that neither the PP and Vox on the right nor Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party could fully embrace. The Pope called for compassion towards those who have experienced the “tragic drama of migration”, which “challenges the conscience of nations and the ethical foundation of the international order today”. He also stated that wherever there is discrimination based on “national, ethnic, religious or linguistic origin”, human dignity is “seriously violated”. Such sentiments stand in contrast to Vox’s calls for mass deportations and restrictions on citizenship and residence permits for those from what it describes as an “Islamic culture”.

At the same time, the Pope was equally keen to defend the right of people to remain in their homelands, a point rarely addressed in contemporary European debates on migration. He said that the matter “goes beyond any purely demographic or economic analysis”, a point which seemed to point to Sánchez’s disproportionate emphasis on the supposed economic benefits of migration. He also stated that the situation “goes beyond the mere management of migration flows”, words that seemed particularly pertinent given the Spanish government’s recent decision to regularise hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.

Another lesson is that the pain caused by clerical sexual abuse is far from over. As the Pope himself told journalists during the outbound flight to Madrid, sexual abuse remains an “open wound”.

He told Spain’s bishops that “one of the most painful encounters is with those who have been wounded precisely by those who were supposed to care for them”. He urged the ecclesial community to respond through “listening, truth, justice, reparations and an even more determined commitment to prevention and a culture of care”.

Spain has been comparatively slow in confronting the legacy of clerical sexual abuse, and it was only this year that the country’s bishops’ conference reached an agreement with the government to establish a process for support and reparations for survivors.

The theme followed the Holy Father as he left Madrid and travelled to Barcelona. On the second day of the Catalan leg of the trip, he visited the Benedictine Abbey of Montserrat, a symbol of Catalan identity. Yet the abbey has also made headlines in recent years because of revelations concerning abuse committed by former monks.

In 2019, it emerged that Andreu Soler, a monk who died in 2008, had abused at least twelve minors over several decades at the institution. During the same year, another monk abused a 17 year old. Jaume Soler Villegas, known as Brother Gabriel, was sentenced to two years in prison, while the monastery was ordered to pay €20,000 in compensation.

Miguel Hurtado, the first person to report abuse at Montserrat, sent a letter to the Apostolic Nunciature in Madrid requesting that the papal visit to the Abbey be cancelled. While thousands gathered outside to welcome the Pope, local and international media focused on the abuse scandals and questioned whether an abbey so recently associated with such cases should receive a papal visit.

The third lesson, and perhaps the most significant, is that the Catholic character of Spain remains far stronger than many assume.

Before the visit, establishing precisely what that meant was remarkably difficult. The Vatican’s pre-visit statistics painted an exceptionally positive picture, listing 45 million Catholics in a population of 49 million, suggesting that 93.25 per cent of Spaniards are Catholic. Based largely on baptismal records, the figures appeared impossibly high.

Pew Research put the figure at around 70 per cent in 2020, while the Spanish Centre for Sociological Research (CIS) found that 54.3 per cent of Spaniards identify as Catholic today. At the same time, a poll conducted by Fundación SM found that 45 per cent of Spaniards aged between 15 and 29 identify as Catholic, compared with 31.6 per cent in 2020.

The figures are inconsistent and difficult to interpret, but that ambiguity mirrors the reality of the Spanish Church itself. Millions attend Holy Week processions every year, and religious festivals remain a central feature of Spanish life. A man from Málaga once told me that, despite never having been baptised, he always visits his favourite statue of Christ during Holy Week. Six of Spain’s ten national public holidays are religious in origin, including the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception. Even many secular celebrations retain a religious dimension. Spain’s National Day falls on the feast of Our Lady of the Pillar, while New Year’s Day is, for many, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.

Alongside this visible Catholic culture, however, there is also widespread religious indifference. While the hermandades, or brotherhoods, continue to attract many young people, Sunday Mass in the average Spanish town will often have few under fifty. Spain has the largest number of monasteries in the world and more than 1,000 men preparing for the priesthood, yet almost 150 religious houses closed between 2012 and 2022.

A history of anti-clericalism and the long association of the Church with Francoism have left the Church’s place in society less secure than in neighbouring Italy, where Catholic identity remains more closely intertwined with national identity, or in Malta, a former Spanish possession where legal protections for unborn children remained in place until very recently.

Yet Pope Leo’s visit represented a major vote of confidence in the Church. Around 1.5 million people attended the Corpus Christi Mass celebrated by the Holy Father. By comparison, Madrid’s population is approximately 3.5 million, making the scale of attendance proportionally huge. It was one of the largest gatherings of Catholics in Europe outside World Youth Day and represented a 50 per cent increase on attendance during Pope Saint John Paul II’s visit to the city in 2003.

Much of the press enjoyed pointing out that the Pope was competing with Bad Bunny, who was touring Spain at the same time. In reality, there was little competition. Despite the remarkable success of the Puerto Rican singer, whose residency broke records for ticket sales by a single artist in Spain, his three-week tour attracted fewer than a quarter of the people who attended events during the Holy Father’s one-week visit.

The apostolic visit to Spain was always going to be a significant test. Spain is a religiously complex country, marked by both anti-clerical sentiment and intense religious devotion. In the end, it proved a remarkable personal success for the Holy Father and for the Church more broadly.

Yet the pace of the modern papacy allows little time for reflection. Attention will soon turn to the next major challenge. If there is a country capable of matching Spain’s combination of deep Catholic roots and anti-clerical tradition, it is the Church’s eldest daughter, France, which Pope Leo is due to visit in September.