“A Christian, besides being benevolent and kind, must be compassionate, love without ulterior motives, and seek the good of others.” Pope Leo XIV gave this message to representatives of Christian charities gathered in a working-class Barcelona parish on Wednesday, June 10. During the brief encounter, he also opened up about his love for football and his childhood dreams.
The Pope visited the famous and picturesque Montserrat monastery at midday, where he led the Rosary had lunch with the Benedictine community. Afterward, he returned to Barcelona to visit the El Raval neighborhood. It has a large immigrant population, particularly from Latin America, the Philippines, and Pakistan.
There, he visited the baroque Church of Sant Agustí, often dubbed the “cathedral of the poor.” The parish is run by the same religious order the Pope belonged to, the Augustinian friars, who are supported in their ministry to the destitute by sisters of the Missionaries of Charity, the community founded by St. Teresa of Calcutta. The Pope said that he felt at home in this spot.
Cardinal Juan José Omella, the archbishop of Barcelona, welcomed the Pope alongside the church’s pastor, Father Faustin John Mlelva. The Pontiff listened to testimonies about the Church’s local commitment to the city’s most vulnerable. They highlighted efforts to combat drugs, human trafficking, and prostitution.
“The diocesan works of charity and assistance that you carry out with dedication are a singular expression of this divine aspiration,” the Pontiff told them. “We must be mindful that the human person is at the center of the Church’s action.” He described charity as the “greatest social commandment.”
For the Pope, “A Christian, besides being benevolent and kind, must be compassionate, love without ulterior motives, and seek the good of others.” He stressed the importance of this witness today “in these times we’re living, when the sense of the sacred dignity of the human being seems to have been lost.”
A passion for football
In perhaps the most tender moment of the trip so far -- though there have been so many tender moments! -- a young boy named Renzo read the Pope a letter he had written him, in which he asked the Pope a series of questions. Already the salutation brought an affectionate laugh from the crowd. The first question on Renzo's list was if the Pope likes soccer, followed immediately by, "Did you dream of being the pope when you were a boy?" The questions got harder, though, as Renzo asked why so many people live on the streets, why his parents have worries, and if God wants some people to be rich and others to be poor. His final question was if we have to always forgive.
The Pope got up, went down the stairs, and gave Renzo a hug before he started answering.
“I used to play football, but mostly American football, which is a bit more violent!” the Pope explained, setting aside his prepared text for a moment. He noted that he only started playing soccer when he was overseeing the formation of seminarians in Trujillo, Peru. “A bit of sports does everyone good,” he commented. We should all do what is necessary to “be in good health: body, mind, and soul.”
What position did he play? “On defense, if you want to know! I wasn’t a big goal scorer!” he joked. “So it has been part of my life,” he said, though he admitted he now prefers playing tennis.
He also mentioned an important lesson we can learn from this sport. “So, soccer also helps us to remember something very important: that life isn’t a race to be lived in a solitary way. It’s something that’s played as part of a team, and we have to learn to run together.”
The upcoming World Cup kicks off in Mexico, Canada, and the United States today. The Pope recalled discovering the tournament in 1982, when it was held in Spain. Italy won the title that year.
However, he notably didn’t mention the "secret" he told on the plane headed to Spain .... that "Prevost" (his given name) is a Real Madrid fan. During an exchange with the flight crew between Madrid and Barcelona, he noted what he'd said earlier, but added, “I have to be careful not to offend anyone’s sensibilities.” The Barcelona and Madrid teams are great rivals, and because soccer is such a beloved national sport, fan loyalty can get out of hand.
“Every child is a dream of God”
Pope Leo XIV also answered young Renzo that he never dreamed of becoming pope, “neither when I was young nor when I was old.” Instead, he had a “desire to dedicate [his] life to God.”
“Every child is a dream of God,” he assured the young boy. “God wants everyone to be happy, and he wants all of us, from childhood and throughout our entire lives, to conserve our heart like that of children: able to trust, full of goodness; he wants us to be his friends” who never drift away from him.
“That’s why, rather than asking whether you’ll become a priest, a doctor, a teacher, a father, or anything else, it’s more important to ask whether you want to be a friend of Jesus.”
The importance of grandparents
Answering his question about grandparents, the Holy Father observed that “grandparents are very important” in family life. They often help raise their grandchildren, babysitting them “with affection and dedication.” In the process, they “help children to know the love of God and love for their neighbor,” so that love “takes root in their hearts.”
We must react to this love with love, he explained, taking care of our grandparents in their old age “as they took care of us.” We must not let “solitude and abandonment become normalized” in the lives of the elderly. “Even if they aren’t our grandparents, may we not allow them to feel alone or unprotected.”
More in general, Leo XIV emphasized, the Lord calls us to “make present God’s love for every man and every woman”, to “welcome every woman as a sister and every man as a brother.” Every person has been made by God to enter into a relationship of “communion with Him, with others, and with creation.”
To conclude the fifth day of his Spanish trip, Pope Leo XIV visited the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia to celebrate Mass on Wednesday evening. Marking the 100th anniversary of architect Antoni Gaudí’s death, the Pope prayed at his tomb in the basilica’s crypt. Gaudí is on the path to canonization, already recognized as Venerable. Finally, Pope Leo blessed the Tower of Jesus Christ, the most recent structure of the Catalan master’s masterpiece to be completed.
You can read all of the Pope's homilies, speeches, and prayers here.
