Overview
- The pope began a week-long apostolic visit to Spain on June 6, and King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia and their daughters formally received him at the Royal Palace in Madrid.
- A public Corpus Christi outdoor Mass in Madrid drew widespread attendance, with news outlets reporting roughly 1.2 million people filling the streets for the service.
- Queen Letizia invoked the privilège du blanc by wearing white outfits for papal audiences, a rare Vatican custom that allows certain queens to appear before the pope in white.
- Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofia dressed in head-to-toe black for a private audience with the pope to follow traditional expectations for royal women at papal meetings.
- A high point still to come in the itinerary is the pope’s scheduled inauguration of the Sagrada Família’s Tower of Jesus Christ in Barcelona, timed to the centenary of Antoni Gaudí’s death.