Using the image of a spiritual journey, Leo XIV encouraged preserving Spain’s rich Christian heritage, while calling for the abandonment of structures that no longer serve the evangelizing mission. The Pontiff also stressed the importance of learning new languages to proclaim the Gospel, strengthening vocational pastoral care, providing solid formation for future priests, and promoting greater co-responsibility of the lay faithful in the life of the Church.
The Pope also dedicated some words to victims of abuse, insisting on the need to respond with listening, truth, justice, reparation, and prevention, and recalled that the Church is called to offer hope to a society marked by the search for meaning.
Pope Leo XIV concluded his address by urging the bishops to be visible signs of communion in a time of polarization and reminding them that “the strength of the Church does not come from the greatness of its means, but from the holiness of its children, from the communion of its shepherds, and from the humble and persevering fidelity of those who allow themselves to be guided by the Spirit.”
Full Address of Pope Leo XIV to the Spanish Episcopal Conference:
Dear brothers in the Episcopate:
It is with great joy that I stand before you on this third day of my apostolic journey in Spain. After greeting the political representatives who welcomed me in Parliament, I would now like to take these moments together to revive communion as Jesus advised his apostles (cf. Mk 6:31). I thank Bishop Luis Javier Argüello García for the kind words he addressed to me as President of the Conference and on behalf of all of you. I hope that mine may contribute to that dialogue in the Spirit which means welcoming all the good that the Lord speaks to us through our brother. The synodal path undertaken by the Church is a process of deep listening. Being able to recognize the voice of God speaking through the ecclesial community is one of its fundamental values.
It is a fruitful dialogue that you as a Church are defining in various ways. One concrete example we can recall is the congresses you are holding. I pause on those celebrated in 2020 and 2025, which have had a special impact: “People of God on the Move” and “For Whom Am I? Assembly of Those Called for the Mission.” Their themes touch on essential questions: how can current challenges be addressed? and who is called to take on this challenge?
In my contribution to this reflection, it occurred to me to propose to you the image of a journey whose destination is God, toward whom we lift our gaze. It is a journey of a unique kind, since we do not truly move materially, but in which we wish to let our hearts take flight.
One temptation on journeys is to become obsessed with what we leave behind—the places, the things, the forms—without opening ourselves, in docility to the Spirit, to the newness of what we encounter. Added to this temptation is that of baggage, which, for similar reasons, we fill with useless things that end up becoming a burden. On the other hand, it is also not advisable to forget something we learn from the experiences of so many migrants: a person alone, without roots and without resources, is someone who suffers terribly and who with great difficulty can establish solid bonds in the place where they arrive.
In this way, in this first phase of our journey, our response to the question of how we can face this challenge we have set ourselves must prudently combine freedom and courage: to leave behind structures that do not help us, that do not respond, or that even distance us from our goal, while having the strength to preserve as a treasure what facilitates it. How can we not recall here the immense Christian heritage of your land, the enormous capacity for gathering that this richness provides us: with its beauty, which reaches even the non-believer, or with the bonds of belonging it has been able to weave into the spiritual identity of every corner of this beloved people, and which remains present even in moments when their faith wavers. A great challenge, certainly, to which we are called to respond with courage, so that this heritage may bear the fruits of which it is capable.
Another treasure we cannot forget in our knapsack is the Viaticum of the pilgrim. The Bread of the Word and of the Eucharist is even more necessary to us than material food, because it opens to us the way of salvation. It is not a question of making the celebration more or less attractive; it is about feeling that if we are part of Him, His absence produces a restlessness comparable to physical hunger. Sacramental life accompanies our existence like that of a child receiving nourishment from its mother, like that of an athlete measuring the strength needed to reach the goal.
On the other hand, something that often costs us a great deal when traveling is communicating with others. Whether due to different language and culture, distrust of the unknown, or resentments and misunderstandings that can arise even among close people, we feel limited in expressing ourselves or understanding our interlocutor. This is an experience we can bring to the proclamation of the Gospel, to welcoming others, to the capacity to respond to the questions of the world around us, or to the need to activate the co-responsibility of community members in our pastoral actions. If earlier we said that we must abandon all that holds us back and distances us, now the watchword must be that our heritage should always be an instrument and opportunity for dialogue with those we meet along the way.
As happens to the pilgrims of the Way of St. James, on our journey we may encounter those vast Castilian plains, empty to our eyes. The few encounters these pilgrims have with some elderly people or foreign workers can be a metaphor for many social situations that unfortunately are perceived in some of your ecclesial realities. It is not the first time Spain has faced an analogous situation: in the past, for example, when the Church had to rebuild its presence in scorched-earth areas, models of evangelization emerged that were later exported to America and that can help us here in our mission.
As then, we are called to build a new reality, through respectful dialogue and the use of new languages, as the famous saintly priest of Granada, Friar Hernando de Talavera, did, and as Saint Toribio de Mogrovejo later repeated in America, whose third centenary of canonization we are celebrating, presenting him precisely as a model of a bishop on the move in a time of mission and ecclesial reorganization. Although the languages in this digital age are different and the cultures that now make up the mosaic of our realities—with migrants from all parts of the world—have also changed, the spirit must remain.
What are the essential points of that spirit? The first has to do with the capacity to communicate, to speak with every reality present in our territory, to humble oneself not only to understand, but to share. Only on the basis of sharing all the good that exists in one’s own heritage, each contributing their grain of sand, will we be able to build a new reality in which faith can take deep root. For this, logically, we must begin by learning the language of the other, initiating processes and weaving bonds where the seed of the Kingdom can be sown. The second is the call to create realities capable of communicating their own experience of faith. Capable of carrying—as Toribio did—the experience of Granada to America; that is, of treasuring in our baggage the resources that allow us to face with frankness the ever-new challenges of evangelization in every circumstance.
After the desert plains, we will also find great cities; in them, silence and distance are not spatial but intimate. The responses will be different, but the processes to reach them are analogous: listening, understanding, respect, generosity, and frankness.
Pilgrims usually set out at night, and often that initial darkness of the path can frighten them. We could evoke the hymn of Vespers, “Night is the time of salvation,” to say that if we go in good company, the difficulties of the journey and the danger of getting lost are reduced. It is the Lord who leads us; He is the Lord of history and of each of our stories; He determines the times. We walk after Him; indeed, we walk with Him as members of one body. This deep bond requires the Church, in this time of polarizations and increasingly harsh oppositions, to bear witness to unity in plurality: a communion capable of welcoming the richness of the gifts, charisms, and sensibilities that the Holy Spirit raises up in the People of God. The image of Christ can be recognized in the living mosaic of the Church, where many tesserae, without confusion, converge to manifest the beauty of the one Lord.
In this task, the ministry of the bishop assumes a particular responsibility. We are called to be a visible principle of communion, first of all with Christ, guarding with love the faith received, in docility to the Word of God and to the living Tradition of the Church; then, in communion with the Successor of Peter and with the universal Church, with the presbyterate and with the diocesan community itself, with consecrated life, with movements, with associations, and with every authentic charism that the Spirit gives for the common edification. Your mission calls you to guard unity, foster dialogue, heal divisions, and accompany the path of the people entrusted to your care.
Communion lived in this way also possesses a missionary force. A Church reconciled within can speak with greater freedom to brothers and sisters of other Christian confessions and other religions, to those who do not believe, to civil authorities, and to all people of goodwill who work for the common good.
This call to be a sign of communion in Christ, walking in unity and extending our hand to the brother or sister we meet, places before us another challenge that today touches the heart of many: the difficulty of assuming definitive commitments and making deep life decisions. In so many young people—and not only in them—the question “For whom am I?” resonates as a sincere search for meaning, belonging, and gift. The human heart is not filled by accumulating experiences, possibilities, or provisional securities; it is filled when it discovers a call, when it understands that life reaches fullness only when it is given away.
For this reason, vocational pastoral care cannot be reduced to a simple search for numbers. It is born of living communities, of happy priests, of families capable of witnessing to the beauty of fidelity, of a Church that knows how to show with simplicity that following Christ does not impoverish existence but expands it. Where the Gospel is lived with joy, service, and communion, the Lord’s call can once again be heard as a promise of life.
Earlier we spoke of loaded baggage, and the pilgrims of the Way of St. James know well that only what is essential should be carried in the backpack. As Pope Francis repeatedly proposed, in the current vocational context it is necessary to say that the preservation of structures cannot prevail over the good of the vocation. Seminarians have the right to the best possible formation, and the Church, for its part, has the right to well-formed priests. The criterion for seminaries to be authentic houses of formation is that they ensure an adequate experience of community life; that they have formators fully dedicated to study and teaching, with experience in spiritual accompaniment; and that they have Higher Centers of Theology equipped with the necessary means to carry out their function. For this, in addition to joining forces, it is essential to learn to work together in managing these challenges.
In this field, difficulties can be lived as opportunities. Sometimes we find it difficult to present the vocation of the laity and their integration into this journey of life that we as a Church are undertaking. On the other hand, we see that in many works traditionally managed by religious, lay collaborators are called upon to continue carrying out the task. This is a difficulty that we can turn into an opportunity for encounter, dialogue, and communication. It depends on us that these laypeople come to perceive their participation in this ecclesial service as a call that God makes to them to assume their responsibility as Christians, interiorizing the spirit and feeling part of the mission that the Lord entrusted to the religious who established it.
As you can see, our journey is made of encounters; in them there will be no lack of those living moments of darkness, and they call us to be Samaritans for them. One of the most painful is with those who have been wounded precisely by those who were supposed to care for them, even by members of the clergy. Before this plague, the ecclesial community is called to respond with listening, truth, justice, reparation, and an ever-stronger commitment to prevention and a culture of care. Every wounded person must be able to find sincere listening, welcome, protection, and real paths of healing.
This same logic also applies to the challenges of a secularized world. Many men and women of our time do not simply reject God; often they carry in their hearts a deep thirst for meaning, truth, belonging, and hope, even when they do not know how to name it. The Church is called to recognize these longings, to listen to them with respect, and to offer, as Peter and John did to the paralytic at the temple gate, the treasure entrusted to them: Jesus Christ, in whose name man can rise and walk (cf. Acts 3:1-10). Even when collaborating with other institutions, religious or civil, even when offering material help, education, assistance, or human promotion, the Church never ceases to offer what is proper to it: the love of God revealed in Christ. This message penetrates society, which does not hesitate to show its appreciation for many of these works. Thus every gesture of Christian charity born of the Gospel carries within it a greater promise: to restore to the person the conviction of being loved.
On our journey we travel through what Saint John Paul II wished to call the “Land of Mary.”[1] In the Blessed Virgin you have your first companion on the way and your principal treasure, for she shows us with her life how to welcome the Word and keep it in the heart, how to accompany the disciples on this itinerary, and how to remain present on the Church’s path as mother of communion and of hope. To her I entrust your ministry, so that she may help you to be, in the midst of the people entrusted to you, that hidden leaven of which the Gospel speaks. Small in the eyes of the world, but capable, when united to Christ, of leavening the mass (cf. Mt 13:33). The strength of the Church does not come from the greatness of its means, but from the holiness of its children, from the communion of its shepherds, from the humble and persevering fidelity of those who allow themselves to be guided by the Spirit.
On this path you are also accompanied by Saint John of Ávila, patron of the Spanish clergy, in this year in which we commemorate the fifth centenary of his priestly ordination. Saint Paul VI defined him as “a benevolent and wise master of the spiritual life, an exemplary renewer of ecclesial life and Christian customs” and, at the same time, “a simple priest.”[2] In this holy doctor, the Church recognizes the priestly life that every bishop is called to guard and to make grow in his own presbyterate.
Looking to him, I think of those who are the closest companions of the bishops on this journey, those “simple priests,” in the highest and most demanding sense of the term. Our walking with them should convey the value of that essence: to be priests in love with Christ, rooted in prayer, faithful to the Church, close to the people, and capable of uniting solid doctrine, apostolic zeal, and pastoral charity. Priests who find in the bishop not only a recognized authority, but a father who accompanies them; and in the other priests, brothers with whom to share the labors and joys of this pilgrimage full of encounters, in which we all seek Christ.
Let us conclude this spiritual journey with a prayer of the holy doctor that reminds us that every ecclesial renewal is born of a heart configured to Christ: “If you command me, Lord, to do what you did, give me your heart” (Sermon 57,20). May this also be our supplication: Lord, give us your heart, a heart capable of lifting our gaze to you, of setting out, of listening, of discerning, of serving, of correcting with charity, of attending with patience, and of proclaiming with joy. For the Church that receives the heart of Christ carries with it the pillar of fire that guides, sustains, defends, and comforts it—the necessary baggage to face any challenge.
May God bless you. Thank you very much.