Pope Leo XIV will celebrate a mass at Barcelona’s iconic Sagrada Familia Basilica during his six-day visit to Spain next month, according to the itinerary of his trip published by the Vatican on Wednesday, May 6.
The mass will be held on June 10 on the 100th anniversary of the death of the basilica’s architect, Antoni Gaudí, who was declared “venerable” by the Catholic Church in 2025 – the first step on the path to sainthood.
The event will mark the inauguration of the newest and tallest tower of the Sagrada Familia basilica, one of Spain’s top landmarks. “There is great anticipation,” Barcelona Archbishop Cardinal Juan Jose Omella said at a press conference in Madrid following Vatican’s release of the program for the June 6-12 visit.
Leo will meet Spain’s King Felipe VI on June 6 in Madrid, before holding a massive outdoor mass in the center of the Spanish capital the following day. The American pope will meet Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who has clashed with US President Donald Trump, on June 8 before a gathering with the diocesan community at Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu stadium.
Leo will then travel to Barcelona, where he is expected to preside over a prayer vigil at the Olympic Stadium on the evening of June 9, ahead of the Sagrada Família mass the following day.
The pope will then travel to the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the coast of West Africa, a key point on the migration route to Europe. The pope, who became head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics last year, is a vocal defender of migrants, an issue also dear to his predecessor Pope Francis. He is set to visit two of the Atlantic archipelago’s islands, Tenerife and Gran Canaria. The pope is scheduled to deliver 22 speeches and homilies during the visit.
The trip is expected to draw large crowds in Spain, a traditionally Catholic country where secularization has nonetheless accelerated in recent decades. The last papal visit to Spain was in August 2011, when Pope Benedict XVI attended World Youth Day in Madrid.
This will be Leo’s third foreign visit in 2026 and the fourth since his election in May 2025, following previous journeys to Monaco in March and a four-country tour of Africa in April. Spanish authorities will deploy more than 13,000 police officers and Civil Guard personnel under a “maximum level” security operation, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said earlier this week.
The visit comes months after the Spanish government and the Catholic Church reached an agreement on compensation for victims of sexual abuse by clergy, following years of resistance and limited transparency from parts of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
