Pedro Sánchez turned to the Pope to ask for votes at the pre-campaign rally he held on Saturday, November 7 in Tarragona alongside the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, and at the same rally he promised to «enshrine the right to abortion in the Constitution» if he wins the general elections on November 29. «Even Pope Leo XIV has voted», said the prime minister, referring to the mid-term legislative elections held on November 3 in the United States, as reported by the Servimedia agency.
Sánchez used the Pontiff’s vote to encourage the mobilization of his electorate against what he called the far-right wave. «We have the Pope and the punk voting in the US», he stated, according to El Español, in reference to Leo XIV and American singer Patti Smith, whose song People Have the Power opened the event. He later repeated the phrase on his social media, along with a call to vote en masse to send Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Santiago Abascal home. «The best recipe against regression is called mobilization,» he also said before around 2,000 people, according to the PSC’s count.
The president admitted he does not know who the Pope voted for, but presented him as someone who agrees with him on several issues. «I don’t know who he voted for,» he acknowledged, adding that he does know what Leo XIV defends regarding migrants. He did the same with artificial intelligence, saying he knows what the Pope thinks «about the need to articulate a new social contract», and with climate change, which he referred to as a climate emergency. According to Vida Nueva, Sánchez identified with the Pope on immigration, artificial intelligence, and climate, but did not mention him when speaking about abortion and euthanasia.
The omission is not minor. The day before, in his first speech in Uruguay before authorities, civil society, and the diplomatic corps, Leo XIV had stated in Montevideo that unborn children already belong to the human family and that protecting them is inseparable from supporting those who welcome them. And during his visit to Spain in June, before the Congress of Deputies, he defended life from conception, as El Español recalled in its coverage of the rally. In Tarragona, Sánchez reserved for that section a commitment of the opposite sign: enshrining abortion in the Constitution.
Leo XIV himself explained to journalists on the flight from Rome to Montevideo on November 6 that he had voted by mail in the U.S. elections and that he was proud to be American and to exercise his right to vote. He did not say who he voted for. Neither the Pope nor the Holy See have expressed any preference regarding the Spanish elections.
The use of the Pope in the campaign comes at a time when Spanish bishops insist that no party should appropriate the Catholic vote. The cardinal archbishop of Madrid, José Cobo, warned at the end of October that no party can present itself as the Christian vote. The Episcopal Conference has not reacted so far to the president’s words.
At the rally, Sánchez did not mention any of the Pontiff’s teachings on life that clash with his program. The president invoked the Pope to mobilize his electorate and, at the same event, promised to enshrine abortion in the Constitution.
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