With fireworks bursting over Barcelona and light rippling across stone spires, Pope Leo XIV on Sunday blessed a monumental new tower at the Sagrada Familia after celebrating mass inside what has become the world’s tallest church.
A fireworks and light show lit up the outside of the temple at the close of the ceremony, washing the unfinished basilica in shifting colours that picked out its soaring pinnacles.
The 90-minute service featured a choir of 600 singers and drew high-profile attendees including Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia.
As Leo delivered his homily in Spanish, Catalan and Latin, multicoloured stained-glass windows glowed between the basilica’s signature tree-like columns.
“We cannot believe in Jesus and promote war. We cannot believe in Jesus and kill the innocent,” the pope said in a thinly veiled reference to US President Donald Trump’s administration.
Fireworks are set off around the basilica of the Sagrada Familia after the pope blessed Jesus Christ tower
At the end of the mass, the US-born pontiff blessed the basilica’s central Jesus Christ tower, completed in February, which brings the structure to its final height of 172.5m.
Its summit was intentionally designed to sit below Barcelona’s 177m Montjuic hill, a gesture of religious deference by Antoni Gaudi, who held that the hill was God’s creation.
Leo looked up at the newly finished tower, sprinkled holy water in its direction and then turned to repeat the blessing toward the crowd, prompting cheers and applause.
Onlookers packed windows and balconies around the square to take in the moment.
“This cross shines by day, reflecting the sunlight, and shines by night, illuminating the city like a lighthouse overlooking the Mediterranean,” the pope said in his homily.
Thousands attended inside the basilica, while a vast crowd outside watched the service on a giant screen installed in front of the Sagrada Familia.
“It seems memorable, something to remember,” Isabel Magallón, a 60-year-old administrative worker, said.
“I wanted to be at the event. I hesitated because of the crowds and everything, but I’m glad I came,” she added.
Pope Leo XIV blesses the Tower of Jesus Christ in the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia
‘Fills me with joy’
The Sagrada Familia remains unfinished, a modernist landmark designed by architect Antoni Gaudi that attracted nearly five million visitors last year.
Work on the basilica began in 1882, and planners expect completion in about a decade.
“To see the tower of the Sagrada Familia completed and blessed by the pope fills me with joy,” said María del Carmen Guillaume, 80, one of 4,000 local residents invited to the mass.
Leo’s appearance in Barcelona came during a week-long visit to Spain and coincided with the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s death on 10 June 1926.
The deeply religious architect—whose cause for sainthood is progressing at the Vatican—was struck by a tram as he was heading to pray at a church.
The Covid-19 pandemic brought tourism to a standstill, squeezing the principal funding stream for Spain’s most-visited monument, which depends heavily on entrance fees.
With travellers now returning in large numbers, the basilica’s finances have been buoyed again, supported by ticket sales and private donations.
Even so, the construction board has avoided naming a firm new completion date for remaining elements, including the contentious Glory Facade and its four bell towers.
Under current plans, a broad staircase and a square would be built before the main entrance—an approach that could require demolishing as many as two blocks of homes.
Residents have spent years campaigning to stop that proposal.
Earlier yesterday, before the Sagrada Familia mass, the head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics visited a prison and an abbey in the Montserrat mountains overlooking Barcelona.
Pope Leo arrived in Spain on Saturday, beginning in Madrid, where he delivered an unprecedented address to the Spanish parliament and later led an open-air mass attended by 1.5 million people.
He has sought to energise the Church in a country long seen as a Catholic stronghold but where religious practice has fallen sharply, and he has pledged stronger action against what he called the “scourge” of sexual violence by clergy.
The pope travels today and tomorrow to the Canary Islands, where immigration will be central to his agenda as the Atlantic archipelago is a major entry point into Europe for irregular migrants.
