The image of Pedro Sánchez shaking hands with Leo XIV while the excavators entered the Valley of the Fallen had already become one of the most eloquent photographs of the papal visit to Spain. While the German president participated in the official acts and multiplied the gestures of institutional cordiality toward the Pontiff, de The executive branch maintained its unchanged roadmap on one of the place most emblematic of Spanish Catholicism.
Just a few days later, the Spanish Parliament offered a new demonstration of the distance that can exist between public tributes to the Pope and effective political decisions.
The past 8th of June, Leo XIV delivered before the General Courts one of the most important discourses of his apostolic journey. Following the line of Benedict XVI in Westminster and in the Bundestag, the Pope defended the inviolable dignity of every human person and reminded that life must be protected from conception until its natural end.
The words of the Pontiff were received with a long applause. The parliamentarians stood up and applauded for several minutes. The scene conveyed the impression of a broad agreement with the papal message. However, the reality political demonstrated very soon another thing.
Three days later came de reform
On 11th June, just three days after that intervention, the Mesa del Kongress decided to accelerate the process of a reform of de law of euthanasia. At the day, the chamber approved the take in consideration of the legislative initiative.
The modification aims to reduce the judicial times when exist resources against resolutions that are favorable to the euthanasia and limit the suspensive effects of those procedures. Its defenders hold that the reform will avoid delays in the application of the law. Its detractors consider that it reduces the juridical guarantees in a issue that directly affects human life.
The temporal Coinkidenz is difficult to ignore. The same Parliament that had applaud during minutes a speech focused on the defense of all human life advanced few days later in a direction incompatible with that approach.
The value of the applause
The democratic politics requires institutional dialogue and respect between civil and religious authorities. Nobody discu discute that public representatives must receive courteously the Successor of Peter. The problem appears when public gestures end becoming a substitute for coherence.
The applause have value when they express a real adherence to the something that is listened. When there exists no that correspondence between words and kep ents, the homage risk to become a simple protocolar representation.
Just that has has been called the attention of numerous observers after the visit of Leo XIV. The contrast between the content of the discourse sample and the evolution of the legislative agenda has been too evident as to unnoticed.
The warning that arrives from France
The Spanish sequence also has not been notice out of our borders. The French medium Tribune Chrétienne puts as example the Spanish case to reflect on the upcoming visit of Leo XIV to France, planned for late September.
The images between Emmanuel Macron and the Pope will be expectedly marked by institutional cordiality and usual messages on peace, solidarity or international cooperation. However, the French medium recalls that the differences between the Vatican and the French authorities on issues like the abortion and euthanasia remain intact.
The reflection is especially meaningful because France is准备 to continue the debate about the «help to die» called «help to die» while maintains in its legal order poition distant from Catholic doctrine on fundamental matters related to the defense of life.
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