Pope Leo XIV heads to Spain — a missionary country he knows by heart

MADRID (OSV News) — Spain has been, and hopefully will continue to be, a very missionary nation.”

Pope Leo XIV spoke these words during a brief encounter with Father José María Calderón, national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in Spain. For Father Calderón, they reflected something more than a passing compliment from a pontiff preparing to visit the country June 6-12.

“They touched my heart,” Father Calderón told OSV News. “They strengthened my desire to continue promoting missionary awareness.”

As the first pope in modern history to have spent much of his priestly ministry as a missionary, Pope Leo arrives in Spain June 6 with a unique familiarity not only with the country itself — which he has visited almost 50 times — but also with the missionary tradition that helped shape Catholicism across much of the world.

His itinerary will take him to Madrid, Barcelona, Gran Canaria and Tenerife, where he is expected to address Spain’s parliament, inaugurate one of the towers of Barcelona’s iconic Sagrada Familia basilica and meet migrants arriving in the Canary Islands.

Yet beneath the official schedule lies a deeper connection.

From his years as an Augustinian missionary and bishop in Peru to his service as prior general of the Augustinian order, Pope Leo repeatedly encountered Spanish missionaries and witnessed firsthand the legacy of a Church that for centuries sent priests, religious and lay missionaries across Latin America, Africa, Asia and beyond.

“He has a lived experience that allows him to speak not about concepts, but about realities he has personally known,” Father Calderón said.

Father Calderón believes Pope Leo’s appreciation for Spain’s missionary history is not rooted in nostalgia.

In a February message to the priests of Madrid, the pope acknowledged the challenges posed by secularization and cultural change, but insisted that many people — especially young people — continue to search for deeper meaning and purpose.

“This is not a time for withdrawal or resignation, but for faithful presence and generous availability,” Pope Leo wrote, encouraging priests to trust that Christ is already at work in people’s lives.

The theme will likely resonate throughout his visit. In Madrid, Pope Leo is expected to preside over a Corpus Christi procession that will incorporate some of Spain’s most beloved expressions of popular piety, including traditional Holy Week pasos. Among them will be images of Our Lady of Almudena, patroness of Madrid, and Christ of Medinaceli, which will also make a pilgrimage to Santiago Bernabéu Stadium for the pope’s gathering with the faithful of the Archdiocese of Madrid.

The emphasis reflects what Father Calderón believes will be one of the pope’s central messages to Spanish Catholics.

“I am convinced he wants Spanish Catholics to regain missionary enthusiasm,” Father Calderón said.

For Pope Leo, the answer to secularization appears not to be retreat, but renewed evangelization — a theme that echoes both his own missionary experience and the centuries-old tradition that first brought the Gospel from Spain to much of the world.

Juan Vicente Boo, a veteran Vatican journalist and author of the Spanish-language biography “León XIV: El Papa de la nueva era” (“Leo XIV: The Pope of a New Era”), said the pope knows Spain better than many realize.

“After studying his biography in depth, I discovered with astonishment that he knew Spain more thoroughly than many Spaniards,” Boo told OSV News.

Pope Leo first visited Spain in July 1982 as a young Augustinian making a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. During the monthlong journey, he and fellow friars traveled across the country in a van, sleeping in tents and visiting 11 cities, including Madrid and Ávila, the hometown of St. Teresa of Ávila.

He would return frequently over the following decades.

“As prior general of the Augustinians, he eventually visited more than 30 Spanish cities over roughly 50 trips,” Boo said. “It is the country he has visited most after Italy.”

His ties to Spain, however, extend beyond travel.

Father Alejandro Moral Antón, the Spanish Augustinian who succeeded Leo as prior general in 2013, said the future pope came to know generations of Spanish missionaries during his years in Rome, Peru and throughout the global Augustinian network.

“Certainly, the pope is very familiar with Spanish missionaries and with the centuries-long history of Spain sending missionaries to Latin America and the rest of the world,” Father Moral Antón told OSV News.

The two men first met in Rome in the 1980s, when many Spanish Augustinians were studying there.

“He came to know our mentality, our way of thinking, and we constantly spoke about our missions in Latin America,” Father Moral Antón said.

That familiarity deepened during Pope Leo’s years in Peru, where he frequently encountered Spanish missionaries serving throughout the country.

Later, as prior general, he visited every Augustinian jurisdiction in the world, including missions established by Spanish provinces in Peru, Colombia, Central America, India and Tanzania.

“He was able to see up close the love we had for these missions,” Father Moral Antón said, describing a commitment rooted in the Augustinian values of communion, community and interiority.

For historians, Pope Leo’s familiarity with Spanish missionary work reflects a much broader historical reality.

“The visit of the missionary pope to the country of missions offers a magnificent opportunity to revisit Spain’s missionary work throughout history,” historian Luis Antequera told OSV News.

According to Antequera, the story began in earnest with Spain’s overseas expansion following 1492 and the arrival of missionaries in the Americas during Columbus’ second voyage in 1493.

“From the very beginning, evangelization was part of the project,” he said.

Over the centuries that followed, Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits and other religious orders established missions throughout the Americas, Africa and Asia, often becoming not only evangelizers but also educators, scholars, linguists and defenders of Indigenous peoples.

Antequera points to figures such as Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos, whose 1511 sermon denouncing abuses against Indigenous peoples remains one of the most famous sermons in Christian history, and Bartolomé de las Casas, whose advocacy helped shape debates over the treatment of native populations.

The Augustinians also played a significant role.

“The first Augustinian arrived in the Americas in 1527,” Antequera noted, linking the order’s missionary history to the pope’s own religious family.

Spanish missionaries would eventually establish enduring Catholic communities throughout Latin America, the Philippines and other parts of the world, helping shape what is now the global center of Catholicism.

Father Calderón believes that history remains alive in the Spanish church today, and that the visit will be less about celebrating Spain’s missionary past than encouraging its missionary future: “I am convinced he wants Spanish Catholics to regain missionary enthusiasm,” he said.

Although the number of missionaries has declined significantly in recent decades, Spain remains the country with most missionaries abroad and remains the second most generous financial supporter of missionary activity, preceded only by the United States.

Whether speaking to priests in Madrid, migrants in the Canary Islands or the faithful gathered at Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, Pope Leo’s message is expected to be consistent: Spain’s missionary story is not merely a chapter of history.

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