{"id":36603,"date":"2026-06-08T09:27:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T09:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/36603\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T09:27:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T09:27:07","slug":"pope-urges-spain-to-stop-fanning-flames-of-polarization-ap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/36603\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope urges Spain to stop fanning flames of polarization | Ap"},"content":{"rendered":"

MADRID (AP) \u2014 Pope Leo XIV<\/a> urged Spaniards on Saturday to stop \u201cfanning the flames of polarization\u201d as he arrived in Spain at a moment of political turmoil for the Socialist-led government<\/a> and a credibility crisis for the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

The American pontiff traveled to Spain dozens of times as a priest, but this is the first visit here by a pope in 15 years. And Spaniards turned out in droves to welcome Leo, with an estimated 500,000 people \u2014 many of them young \u2014 cheering \u201cThis is the youth of the pope\u201d at a raucous evening prayer vigil in Plaza de Lima in Madrid, where Leo was treated to a rock star’s welcome.<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADRID (AP) \u2014 Pope Leo XIV urged Spaniards on Saturday to stop \u201cfanning the flames of polarization\u201d as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9948,17634,1065,66,3474,82,10022,9970,70,17,17635],"class_list":["post-36603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-catholic-church","tag-catholic-church-sexual-abuse-cases","tag-christianity","tag-europe","tag-felipe-vi","tag-madrid","tag-pope","tag-pope-francis","tag-pope-leo-xiv","tag-spain","tag-vox-political-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}