Viewed from Barcelona, the skyline shifted forever on Wednesday evening as Pope Leo XIV solemnly blessed the 172.5-metre Tower of Jesus Christ, finally crowning Antoni Gaudí’s unfinished basilica with its tallest spire and transforming it into the highest church on earth. The mass, held precisely one century after Gaudí’s death, was the centerpiece of a week-long papal visit to Spain and drew enormous crowds to the UNESCO world heritage site. Italian media noted that the newly installed pinnacle – a 17-metre cross clad in ceramic and glass, containing the sculpture of the Lamb of God – also serves as a public viewpoint, fusing the devotional with the spectacular in a manner the fiercely devout architect would have understood.

From Rome, the event was freighted with multiple layers of symbolism. The American pontiff, who has recently clashed with President Trump over the war in Iran and immigration, presided at an altar resting above Gaudí’s own tomb, while the Vatican’s declaration that the architect is now “venerable” advanced his long path towards sainthood. Yet the visit also generated friction closer to the ground: Catalan nationalist circles reacted angrily after the missal for the blessing was published in Spanish rather than Catalan, a reminder of how sacred space remains entangled with territorial identity.

Analysts in London observe that the milestone is as much an engineering story as a spiritual one. Journalists granted rare access to the “Workshop 54” platform, suspended 60 metres above the nave, described a dizzying marriage of robotic stone-cutting and artisan hand-finishing: mallets are still used to give the exterior panels their rough texture, and specialists in ceramics, ironwork and glass have adapted centuries-old crafts to contemporary tolerances. The result is the world’s tallest church interior, but the broader project remains stubbornly incomplete. Spanish press reports underscore that the monumental Glory façade and other elements will likely not be finished before 2035, stalled partly by property expropriations still pending.

From Madrid, seasoned observers of Barcelona’s cultural politics point to a deeper tension between myth and reality that this centenary has laid bare. Curators of the official Gaudí Year insist that the tourist-friendly anecdotes woven around Casa Batlló or La Pedrera obscure a far more radical figure – a sickly child who drew his geometric rules from nature, an irascible loner who spurned flattery and died unrecognised after a tram struck him on the Gran Vía. The very fact that his corpse was mistaken for a beggar’s remains a sobering counterpoint to the global adulation now fixed in stone and glass. As the evening ceremonies ended and the cross began to illuminate the Catalan capital, the basilica stood less as a completed work than as a permanently evolving argument between timeless ambition and earthly delay.