The Government has approved this Tuesday the constitutional reform to enshrine abortion, elevating the death of the innocent to constitutional status, which now begins its processing in the Cortes. At the same time, the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) presents the details of Pope Leo XIV’s trip to Spain, outlining with greater clarity the scenario that the Pope will encounter next June.
One more step in consolidating abortion as a right
The Council of Ministers has given the green light to the text that introduces into the Constitution the obligation to guarantee the «voluntary interruption of pregnancy.» With this move, the Executive not only maintains the current legislation but reinforces it structurally, making any future review more difficult.
The Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, has defended the measure by appealing to territorial equality, but the scope of the reform goes much further: it means legally consolidating a practice that involves the elimination of human lives in their most vulnerable phase.
In this context, the president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, Mons. Luis Argüello, has criticized the measure by stating that, “the right to life and support for women in promoting motherhood could be enshrined in this demographic winter. But no, the Government prefers to entrench itself, proposing a constitutional change in favor of death, using women as an ideological excuse”.
Against that backdrop, the reform now enters its parliamentary phase and will need a three-fifths majority in Congress and the Senate, a scenario that looks unfavorable for the Government. But beyond its viability, the initiative aims to establish abortion as the axis of public debate.
The coincidence with the papal visit
The approval of this reform coincides with the official presentation of Leo XIV’s visit—planned by the Church in a pastoral key under the motto “Lift up your eyes”—and contributes to intensifying the polarization of the scenario that the Pope will encounter in Spain next June.
This is not merely a matter of calendar, but of context: the Pope’s trip will inevitably insert itself into an active political agenda, increasingly marked by decisions that affect central issues of moral and social life.
A scenario that had already been pointed out
Infovaticana had already warned months ago: Spain is today, without exaggeration, a true institutional time bomb. And its detonation coinciding with the Pope’s presence on Spanish soil is not an exaggerated hypothesis, but a real possibility.
Read also: Leo in Sánchez’s Spain: a diplomatic imprudence that could turn into a scandal
The Holy See’s diplomatic tradition has historically been prudent in contexts of high political tension, avoiding trips that could be interpreted in partisan terms or instrumentalized by governments in power. The previous pontificate was particularly aware of this risk, even renouncing a trip to Argentina itself to avoid conditioning, either for or against, deeply polarized successive governments.
In this context, the possibility—still unconfirmed—of Leo XIV addressing the Cortes Generales, for example, highlights the thin line on which his visit is situated.
Naivety is no excuse
Meanwhile, the Government continues to deepen an agenda that, far from protecting life, normalizes its elimination in the name of supposed social advances. The message is clear: where life should be defended, death is legislated; where the family should be supported, its reduction is promoted.
In such a scenario, naivety is no excuse. If Leo XIV’s visit does not serve to introduce that clarity—if it is not proclaimed with true apostolic zeal—the risk will not only be that of a missed opportunity. It will be that of having been present… without having said the essential.