COMMENTARY: Both events indicate what has become a key theme of the new pontificate: easing frictions and tensions.
The drama of Holy Week includes the kings and their viceroys, Herod and Pilate, and a dispute over kingship itself. Jesus goes to the cross under the title “King of the Jews.”
Kings of an earthly sort were prominent on Pope Leo XIV’s schedule just before Holy Week, with the king and queen of Spain visiting the Holy Father and Pope Leo choosing Monaco — a tiny principality still ruled by a monarch with genuine authority — for his second papal trip outside Italy.
Both events indicate what has become a key theme of the new pontificate: easing frictions and tensions. Leo intends to reengage the papacy with some of the European nations less engaged by Pope Francis.
In choosing where to travel, the late Holy Father famously preferred the “peripheries.” That was applied to Europe too, where Francis visited the Nordic countries, the Baltic countries, Albania and Greece, but the nations in the historic center of European power — Britain, France, Germany and Spain — were left out. There was a preference, too, for Protestant and Orthodox Europe over Catholic Europe.
There were trips to historic Catholic countries in Europe, but those were more or less obligatory: the canonization of Francisco and Jacinta on the centennial of the apparitions in Fatima (2017), the World Meeting of Families in Dublin (2018), World Youth Day in Kraków (2016) and Lisbon (2023).
Indeed, Pope Francis went out of his way, in the case of France, to insist that he was not visiting. He went to Strasbourg (2014) to address the European Parliament, stayed only four hours, and declined to visit the local cathedral, then celebrating its 1,000th anniversary. It was a visit to the seat of the parliament, not to France. It was as if the Pope had visited the U.N. in New York and not gone to St. Patrick’s.
In 2023, Francis went to Marseille, France’s second-largest city, but he went for a conference on Mediterranean immigration. He was blunt: “I’ll go to Marseille, but not to France.”
Then in 2024, when invited to Paris for the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral, Pope Francis declined, ceding the role of guest of honor to President Donald Trump. Just days later, though, he visited the Mediterranean island of Corsica, a French territory — causing some offense in France that he would visit neither Notre Dame nor Paris.
Nor did he visit Madrid, or Munich or London.
Pope Leo XIV is taking a different approach.
He welcomed King Charles III and Queen Camilla on a “state visit” last October, a special honor. As the (pre-Reformation) English crown had a particular link with the papal basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, the king was named a “Royal Confrater” of the basilica, and a designated throne was provided for him and his successors. It can be expected that, in due course, Pope Leo will return the visit.
More important was the visit by King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain in March. The Spanish crown has historic links with the papacy. When, after the Spanish Civil War, the Spanish royal family was in exile in Rome, the future King Juan Carlos was baptized in 1938 as an infant by the secretary of state, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli. The following year, Cardinal Pacelli would be elected Pope Pius XII.
Those Roman ties are particularly manifest at the papal Basilica of St. Mary Major, where the king of Spain is an honorary canon. Despite becoming king (2014) early in the reign of Pope Francis, and despite the predilection the late Holy Father had for St. Mary Major, even choosing to be buried there, Felipe never accepted the honor while Francis was alive. In the first year of Pope Leo, though, Felipe came to Rome and was ceremonially installed amid the canons. The change was likely prompted by Leo choosing to make Spain his first major European visit this coming June.
The one-day lightning visit to Monaco is part of a similar shift. At about 500 acres, Monaco is a tiny sovereign state, only five times the size of the even tinier Vatican City State. It is ruled by a sovereign monarch who wields real authority, unlike the kings of Britain or Spain. Recently, Prince Albert II vetoed, for example, a law liberalizing abortion. Catholicism is the official state religion.
Monaco had never had a papal visit, despite relations with the Holy See that go back centuries — relations more firmly established than with many other European nations. In choosing to visit, Leo demonstrated both continuity and change. Monaco is small and literally peripheral, on the edge of France at the Mediterranean shore. At the same time, it has the identity of “old Europe,” personified in an officially Catholic sovereign with official ties to the Holy See. Leo managed to visit both peripheral Europe and old Catholic Europe at once.
Leo’s visit to Spain in June will close a breach opened by Pope Francis. St. John Paul the Great visited Spain five times in 26 years, and Pope Benedict XVI visited three times in eight years. Thus the absence of the Holy Father for 12 years under Francis was felt keenly.
With Spain scheduled for this year, a proper visit to France, including Paris, cannot be far behind.