Leo XIV Condemned War in Barcelona and Is Flying to Meet Migrants at the Dock of Shame. The First American Pope Turned His Trip to Spain into a Message to Washington

While American aircraft bombed Iranian targets for the second night in a row, the first pope from the United States stood in Barcelona's Sagrada Família and declared that a Christian cannot support war — and that he has long considered the tradition of "just war," on which the defense of the strikes relies, to be obsolete. A day later, on Thursday, Leo XIV flies to the Canary Islands — to the port of Arguineguín, which became a symbol of Europe's migration collapse in 2020 — to meet migrants who survived the crossing of the Atlantic. In a single trip, he thus runs up against two policies that the Trump administration pushes perhaps most forcefully of all: war and the closing of borders.

A Sermon Against His Own Country

"We cannot believe in Jesus and support war. We cannot believe in Jesus and kill the innocent," the pope declared on Wednesday evening during a solemn mass at the Sagrada Família before King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia, and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. RTE ↗

The words came on the day the United States struck Iran for the second night in a row, and Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Leo XIV, a native of Chicago and the first American to hold the papal chair, thereby set the head of the Church against the policy of his own country — and against the vocabulary of "just war" on which the defense of the strikes rests.

The dispute is not new. Trump had previously publicly attacked the pope, claiming that Leo supposedly considers it acceptable "for Iran to have a nuclear weapon." The pope responded that the Church's mission is to proclaim peace and the gospel: "If someone wants to criticize me for proclaiming the gospel, let them do so truthfully." TIME ↗

Dock of Shame: The Trip Francis Never Made

On Thursday, the program's tone shifts sharply. On Gran Canaria, the pope heads to the port of Arguineguín, which Spanish media call the "dock of shame": in 2020, boats from Africa landed there by the thousands, and people slept out in the open on the concrete dock. Leo XIV meets migrants there, mainly from West Africa, and the organizations that help them. The Hill/AP ↗

The newspaper El País frames the Canary stop as "the trip Francis never got to make" — his predecessor made the fate of migrants one of the central themes of his pontificate (the famous visit to the island of Lampedusa in 2013), but he never made it to the Canaries. El País ↗

The firsthand reality is to be conveyed to the pope by Venezuelan priest Darwin Rivas, who runs four parishes on the island of El Hierro — the main point of arrival on the deadliest Atlantic route. "Migration is a political problem that cannot be solved with police solutions," he says. El País ↗

The message also has a domestic address. The embrace of migrants is a silent objection to the anti-immigration line pushed in Spain by the far-right Vox and, across the ocean, by the Trump administration. On Friday, the trip culminates on Tenerife, at the Las Raíces reception center. CNN ↗

A Catalan Undertone in Barcelona

Even the Barcelona finale itself had a second layer. At the Sagrada Família, the pope consecrated the 172-meter Tower of Jesus Christ — which makes Gaudí's church the tallest in the world — on the centenary of the architect's death. El País ↗

The Catalan question crept into the event. Along the route to the basilica, estelada flags (a symbol of Catalan independence) mingled with Spanish flags; the associations ANC and Òmnium Cultural handed out more than 4,000 postcards bearing the slogan "We want to hear you in Gaudí's language" and sought to use the pope's visit to remind the world of the desire for an independent Catalonia. Leo XIV delivered a few sentences in Catalan, but did not take up the calls for independence and stuck to appeals for reconciliation and unity. El Mundo ↗

The Limits of What the Pope Didn't Say

The strength and the weakness of Leo's message lie in its indirectness. He named neither Trump nor Iran from the lectern — so both critics and defenders can read his words as they wish. He likewise avoided taking a clear stance on Catalan independence, and his embrace of migrants is above all symbolic: it does not change European or Spanish policy on returns and borders.

Even the framing depends on the outlet. The left-leaning El País reads the trip through the lens of migration and Francis's legacy, while the right-leaning El Mundo emphasizes that the pope did not endorse the demands of Catalan separatists. The Slovak reader thus gets two different stories about the same mass — and neither of them is complete.

What hotinfo Is Watching

• Friday, June 12: the conclusion on Tenerife and return to Rome — whether the pope repeats his migration appeal or adds another anti-war call.
• Washington's reaction: whether Trump or Vance respond, and thus whether the transatlantic dispute between the Church and the White House escalates or dies down.
• The "just war" vocabulary: whether the pope's voice resonates in the debate over the ongoing strikes on Iran.
• Valle de los Caídos: the open dispute between state and Church over this monument to the fallen — whether Leo XIV touches on it during the trip.