By Joshua McElwee
BARCELONA, June 9 (Reuters) - Pope Leo spoke in Catalan, a language key to the region's identity, as he arrived in Barcelona on Tuesday for the second stop of a week-long tour of Spain in which he has warned that conflicts have pushed the world into a profound crisis.
As in Madrid, where he opened the first visit of a pope to Spain in 15 years, Leo was greeted by large crowds as he arrived at Barcelona's 14th century cathedral to preside over a midday prayer. Thousands pressed against barriers outside the church in the sunshine, waving flags and screaming "Long live the pope!"
"Estimats germans i germanes" (Dear brothers and sisters), Leo opened his homily in Catalan, evoking the region's distinct cultural and political character.
Regional officials had been hoping the pope would speak in the language, which is widely used in schools, churches and local politics.
Catalan, whose use in public was restricted during General Francisco Franco's dictatorship, which ended in 1975, is a central part of identity in the region, which tried to secede from Spain in 2017. The independence drive has subsided since and the region is now governed by a non-separatist leader.
On Monday, as Leo arrived at Spain's parliament to give an address, Miriam Nogueras, a lawmaker with the hardline Catalan separatist party Junts, thanked him in advance for planning to speak in Catalan.
SAGRADA FAMILIA TOWER
Leo, who has adopted a more forceful tone against the direction of global leadership, urged respect for diversity in his parliamentary address and said the "moral greatness" of any country depended on how it treated migrants and other vulnerable populations.
Leo is due later on Tuesday to meet the leader of the northeastern region of Catalonia and hold a prayer vigil with young people at the Lluis Companys Olympic Stadium.
The centrepiece of Leo's visit to Barcelona will be on Wednesday, when the pope will visit an abbey in nearby Montserrat and inaugurate the newest tower of the Sagrada Familia, the modernist basilica that has become the world's tallest church.
The visit to the basilica is also celebrating the legacy of its architect, Antoni Gaudí, whose designs were mocked in his lifetime but are now being praised. A fervent Catholic who died on June 10, 1926, he is on the path to Catholic sainthood.
The pope, who met six victims of sexual abuse by members of Spain's clergy on Monday, has been criticised by some abuse survivors for his plans to visit the abbey in Montserrat.
It was included in a 2023 report by Spain's human rights ombudsman that estimated that hundreds of thousands of victims had been abused by Spanish clergy over decades. In 2019, the abbot of Montserrat publicly apologised to victims of sexual abuse at the abbey's school.
Leo's visit to Spain will culminate on Friday in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off western Africa, where the pope will meet some 1,000 migrants who have crossed dangerous Atlantic waters on small dinghies to reach Europe.
In his speech to parliament on Monday, the pope said a lack of help for the world's migrants was challenging "the ethical foundation of the international order".
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Additional reporting by Joan Faus; Editing by David Latona and Alison Williams)
