More than 1.2 million people flooded Madrid’s emblematic Plaza de Cibeles and surrounding boulevards on Sunday, as Pope Leo XIV celebrated an open-air Mass that marked the apogee of his week-long visit to Spain, the first by a pontiff to an EU country outside Italy. Under a blazing sun, the first American head of the Catholic Church used the feast of Corpus Christi to issue a stark call for a faith that is not ‘a museum of the past to be visited, but a school of faith from which to draw even today,’ a message that resonated across a country where religious observance has plunged from 90 per cent in the 1970s to barely 56 per cent today. (A25)

The solemn liturgy, attended by King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia and their daughters, blended majestic Catholic ritual with a reproach to modern indifference. ‘No one can kneel before the Lord and despise his brother,’ the pope declared, weaving the Eucharist into a social gospel that aligned God with ‘the poor, the oppressed, the lonely and the abandoned.’ Italian reports highlighted his additional appeal—‘enough egoism and indifference, let us build a new world’—which echoed his persistent emphasis on migrants and outcasts. (A3, A34)

The event was not without levity. On his flight to Madrid, Leo joked that young Spaniards would likely prefer a Bad Bunny concert to seeing the pope, and during his tour, he mimicked a viral hand gesture and fielded a football question with diplomatic charm: ‘I support all teams, but [Cardinal] Prevost is a Real Madrid fan.’ Such moments, meticulously amplified by US and Middle Eastern media, lent a populist warmth to a visit freighted with geopolitical symbolism. (A5, A14, A17)

The Mass, protected by a mammoth security operation, saw police close access well before the service as numbers exceeded 1.2 million. Many pilgrims had camped overnight, their hymns mingling with stragglers from a Bad Bunny concert. The day concluded with a traditional flower-carpeted procession, a vivid display of Spanish popular piety that the pope reframed not as folklore but as a living ‘school of faith.’ (A9, A22, A26)

With stops still planned in Barcelona—where he will inaugurate a tower at the Sagrada Família—and the Canary Islands to meet migrants who braved Atlantic crossings, Leo’s tour is being parsed as a strategic bid to revitalise Europe’s Catholic heritage. Viewed from Rome, the massive crowds defied forecasts of terminal decline; from Washington, his mix of doctrinal fidelity and social outreach positioned him as a pontiff for an age of polarisation. Whether the euphoria translates into durable renewal remains uncertain, but on Sunday, the faithful in Madrid offered a resounding riposte to the prophets of secularisation. (A7, A10)