BARCELONA, Spain — Pope Leo XIV told 40,000 faithful at the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium that God “does not want suffering” and admonished Christians who attribute pain to a divine plan, shifting his apostolic journey from Madrid’s political center to Catalonia’s capital for a series of events focused on human dignity, mental health and the prison system.
“We must question the dynamics of our society, the culture of individualism and the temptation of violence — but not God,” the pope said at a prayer vigil at the stadium, named after a former president of the autonomous region who was shot by General Francisco Franco’s authoritarian regime. Pope Leo read substantial portions of his texts in Catalan, drawing loud applause when he stumbled over the regional language’s complex sounds.
The pope forcefully admonished any attempts to “spiritualize pain, superficially attributing it to ‘God’s will’ or to some mysterious plan of his, because this risks minimizing that suffering, silencing it and hurting people.” He added: “God does not want suffering. He carries it with us and invites us to trust in him with perseverance.”
Three young people shared painful testimonies with the pope and the crowd — one young man who had lived feeling “immense emptiness,” one young woman who had attempted suicide, and another who spent time in foster care and juvenile detention after her father had tried to kill her mother. “Sometimes I look up to heaven and ask God, ‘Where were you when I was a little girl?’” the third told the pope. In response, Pope Leo redirected the question: “Should we ask, ‘Where was God?’ Or should we ask ourselves about humanity?”
Pope Leo noted an apparent correlation between increased mental health issues and a “deeply wrong” strain of constant progress in modern society that “subjects people to pressures, expectations and tensions that compromise healthy balances.” He called for “a healthcare system that prioritizes this invisible and widespread malaise” of depression and urged the faithful to cultivate a “healthy sense of restlessness” rather than chase “relentlessly after profit, performance and perfection.”
The pope visited the “Brians 1” penitentiary in Barcelona, where incarcerated women shouted “God bless you!” and “Long live the pope!” from windows as he arrived. Inside, he told prisoners: “God loves you just as you are, but he dreams of you being even better! The Lord allows us all to start anew, for being human and being Christian does not mean never making mistakes, but rather growing in the ability to convert, repent, make amends and, above all, to reconcile and forgive.”
At the Montserrat sanctuary and Benedictine monastery northwest of Barcelona, Pope Leo said Jesus “exposes the violence that can lurk in our words and attitudes: criticism that humiliates, condemnation that destroys and aggression that divides.” The pope made no mention of clergy sex abuse at the monastery, which has come to symbolize the scandal in Spain after multiple victims reported decades of abuse by monks starting in 2019. Just two months before the visit, the Catholic Church and Spain’s government agreed on a compensation program for abuse victims.
Pope Leo’s Barcelona remarks built on themes from Madrid, where he had urged Spaniards to work together across their diversity to protect human dignity. Catalonia has long been home to a movement seeking greater autonomy or independence from Spain, with tensions escalating in 2017 after Catalan leaders organized an independence referendum that Madrid opposed and Spanish courts later ruled unconstitutional. The pope’s decision to speak in Catalan carried symbolic weight in that context, though he did not address current political or cultural debates in the region.