BY : Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor
Pope Leo XIV called on Europe to recognize Christianity’s role in the continent’s identity as he presided over a mass attended by 1.2 million people in Madrid on Sunday, the Catholic feast of Corpus Domini, pressing the case for faith’s continued place in public life.
Addressing the enormous crowd gathered at the city’s Plaza de Cibeles and the surrounding streets, Leo cited Christianity’s contributions to European art, culture and civic life, pointing to the schools, hospitals and other institutions that Christians, “motivated by their faith,” had built over centuries, The Associated Press reported.
“Is it seriously possible to believe that Europe — which we deeply love — would be the same without the influence of faith?” the pope asked.
The mass was the largest event of Leo’s weeklong trip to Spain, which began Saturday and drew an estimated 600,000 young Spaniards to a vigil service that evening.
Participants knelt in several minutes of silent prayer alongside the pope.
Leo told the crowd that Spain’s centuries-old devotional practices amounted to more than cultural preservation.
“Herein lies the task of Spain today and in the future,” he said, adding that the country’s religious heritage should be “a school of faith from which to draw even today,” not a museum relic.
Pope Leo’s remarks were consistent with positions he has staked out in other settings.
In December, he met in Rome with a delegation from the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, a center-right bloc within the European Parliament, and told the lawmakers that Europe’s identity “can only be understood and promoted in reference to its Judeo-Christian roots,” as reported by Vatican News at the time.
At that meeting, Leo said the case for preserving that religious legacy rested on more than protecting Christian communities or maintaining social customs.
Europe’s Judeo-Christian inheritance, he argued, is a “recognition of fact,” evidenced by the continent’s cathedrals, art, music, scientific advances and universities, which he called an “intrinsic link between Christianity and European history” that should be “cherished and celebrated.”
He also tied that heritage to the “divinely bestowed rights and inherent worth of every human person, from conception to natural death,” and said Europe’s ethical tradition provided the foundation for tackling poverty, social exclusion, climate issues and violence.
Meanwhile, the clergy sexual abuse scandal, which emerged in Spain in recent years after extensive local media coverage, hung over the pope’s Madrid visit.
Miguel Hurtado, a survivor who alleged that a monk at Montserrat Abbey, a 1,000-year-old Benedictine monastery outside Barcelona, sexually assaulted him more than two decades ago, staged a protest outside the Vatican embassy in Madrid on Sunday.
He said he had written to the Vatican requesting a meeting with Leo and asking that the pope cancel a planned visit to Montserrat next Wednesday.
“I understand you can’t meet with all of us victims, because we are more than 400,000,” Hurtado said, addressing a cardboard image of the pope.
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