Pope Leo XIV's Visit Exposes Contradictions in Spain's Politics of Faith and Migration

As Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Spain drew to a close, the party expected to be the most welcoming found itself in the most awkward position. Vox, the far-right party led by Santiago Abascal, views Catholicism as a foundational marker of Spanish identity. But the Pope’s visit exposed a glaring contradiction between that claim and the Church's doctrines on migrants, war, and human dignity.

The Pope’s address to the Spanish parliament on Monday struck a tone far removed from an endorsement of Abascal’s politics, even though the Vox leader professes to be a devout Catholic. Invoking the School of Salamanca — a 16th-century movement of theologians who defended the rights and dignity of Indigenous peoples in the Americas against the logic of conquest — the Pope recalled a Catholic tradition that measures power by how it treats the vulnerable. In a country roiled by immigration politics, no one could miss the message that history was meant to condemn.

Vox embodies the kind of politics the Pope is denouncing: the party has called for mass deportations, dubbed “re-migration,” targeting undocumented migrants, their children (some born in Spain), and those Abascal accuses of living on welfare or refusing to adapt to Spanish customs. It also opposes taking in unaccompanied migrant minors. Pope Leo XIV visited Gran Canaria to speak with those who risked their lives on the Atlantic migration route from Africa to Europe. According to the International Organization for Migration, at least 1,214 people died or went missing on the way to the Canary Islands last year, and NGOs say the real figure is far higher. His determination to highlight the plight of asylum seekers and migrants set him at odds with U.S. President Donald Trump, whom Abascal admires. In contrast, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whose government recently cleared the way for at least 500,000 undocumented migrants and asylum seekers to regularize their status, had every reason to welcome the visit.

To understand the context of Pope Leo XIV's visit, it is worth remembering that Spain is no longer the Catholic nation it was a generation ago. State pollster CIS recorded about 68% of Spaniards identifying as Catholic a decade ago; by spring 2025, that figure had fallen to 52.8%, with only 17.3% describing themselves as practicing. Yet Spain is also seeing a surprising revival of Catholic identity among Gen Z and younger millennials. According to the SM Foundation’s “Jovenes Españoles 2026” survey, the share of Spanish youth identifying as Catholic rose from 31.6% to roughly 45% in five years, reversing decades of secularization. This shift parallels a strong rightward move among young voters.

Pope Leo XIV seemed to directly address this new context. At an outdoor Mass in Madrid on Sunday attended by more than a million people, the American-born Pope drew a line between Christian values and far-right politics when he told the crowd that “no one can kneel before the Lord and despise their brothers.”

Abascal, Vox, and those young conservative voters must have realized that Pope Leo XIV's political agenda offers little sympathy for theirs. That is why, after the Pope addressed parliament, the far-right leader said we “must distinguish between speeches and actual policies. These are the words expected from a religious leader.” Though Abascal is trying to downplay the Pope’s message, he knows it is increasingly difficult to defend the version of Christian values that his party claims as its own. And the party’s recent attacks on Spanish bishops for backing the government’s immigration amnesty prompted Pope Leo XIV to warn against using the Church for political ends.

All this could weigh on next year's general election. Vox is rebuilding regional alliances with the conservative Popular Party (PP), as reflected in PP-Vox pacts in Extremadura, Aragon, and Castile and León, and hopes to take that partnership to national power if the PP, as forecast, wins. As the PP continues to ally with Vox, including adopting the far-right “national preference” policy that prioritizes native-born Spaniards over those born abroad in housing and welfare, it may also start losing some of the Catholic vote on which it has long relied.

Pope Leo XIV and Sánchez appear to agree on both fronts: immigration and the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, which the Pope called “unjust” and the prime minister termed “illegal.” But if the far right is unhappy with this visit, the Socialists should not assume they have gained an ally in the American-born Pope. The Catholic Church plays a longer and more cautious game than partisan politicians, and has a centuries-old tendency toward compromise — an instinct that has served the Church well. There is also a deeper calculus: as Christianity loses ground and the share of the practicing faithful shrinks in the global population, its center of gravity is shifting to the Global South — precisely the regions from which most migrants to Europe come. Thus the Church's defense of migrants is not only a matter of principle but also of its own future. But principle is one thing; specific political alignment is another.

On most moral issues, such as family and abortion, the Catholic Church remains closer to Vox than to the Socialists. That will not change, because these stances are rooted in doctrine and revelation, not political convenience. Sánchez’s best hope, therefore, is a tactical convergence with the Pope, using a favorable moment to detach progressive Catholic voters from traditionalists. In “catolicísima” Spain — the Spain once imagined as most Catholic — that would already be a remarkable outcome.

Notably, in an age when religious sentiment is no longer a given, the Catholic Church remains central to political debate, especially in a country like Spain, where religion still shapes political identity. In a world where politics struggles to provide shared meaning for life and speaks to uprooted individuals often bound only by fleeting fears, the Church still offers a sense of ancient community. That is why politicians from opposing camps court a pope who refuses to speak like one of them, and why his words in Madrid inevitably become political.