Pope Leo is considering visiting Spain in June, according to sources in the Spanish bishops’ conference.
Its president Archbishop Luis Argüello of Valladolid was due to hold a meeting with the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin on Friday to discuss preparations for a visit, the Spanish news agency EFE reported, citing sources at the conference.
Such a visit would be the first by a pope to Spain since Benedict XVI attended the 2011 World Youth Day in Madrid.
During his visit to Turkey and Lebanon in November, the first international visit of his pontificate, Pope Leo said the prospect of an apostolic journey to Spain was “more than a hope”.
He added: “We are going to look into the dates.”
Archbishop Argüello also voiced hopes in November that a papal visit to Spain could happen “relatively soon”.
He mentioned that a visit to the Canary Islands – to which many migrants travel – was under consideration, as it had been under Pope Francis.
Argüello noted that 2026 will mark 300 years since the canonisation of the mystic St John of the Cross.
The year will also feature the completion of the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and the “possible beatification” of its architect Antonio Gaudí, he added.
The year also marks the three-hundredth anniversary of the canonisation of the second Archbishop of Lima, St Turibius of Mogrovejo, who was born in Mayorga de Campos, a town in the province of Valladolid.
He was recorded as having walked or travelled by mule for 40,000km spreading the Gospel through South America, a peregrination that ended in the town of Saña, now part of the Diocese of Chiclayo in northern Peru where Robert Prevost was bishop before his appointment to the Vatican and subsequent election as Pope.
In December, the Archdiocese of Lima began a jubilee year of thanksgiving for the canonisation of St Turibius.