Pope Leo XIV brought bustling Madrid to a halt Sunday, drawing 1.2 million people — the largest crowd he has encountered yet in his 13-month pontificate — for his first public Mass in Spain and a Eucharistic procession through the Spanish capital.
Before the most public act of devotion of his seven-day visit to Spain — a Corpus Christi procession in which the pope carried the Eucharist through Madrid’s streets — Leo said that religious practice cannot remain a “comfortable, private faith,” prodding Spain’s Catholics toward conversion marked by care for the poor and marginalized.
“The Christ who processes through the streets in the monstrance is the same one who identifies with the poor, the downtrodden, those who are alone and forsaken,” he said in Madrid’s Plaza de Cibales, where the city’s four main roads meet at a fountain depicting the Greek goddess of fertility Cibele.
Leo celebrated Sunday Mass in Madrid on the second day of his seven-day trip through Spain on the feast of Corpus Christi, which celebrates what Catholics believe to be the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.
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With thanks to National Catholic Reporter and Justin McLellan, where this article originally appeared.
