Pope Leo XIV urges diplomacy in first address to Spain's parliament

Pope Leo XIV used Spain’s parliament to argue that war is a defeat of negotiation, pressing lawmakers to choose diplomacy just as Israel and Iran were trading strikes and the wider Middle East remained unstable. His address to the Cortes Generales on June 8 was the first papal speech ever delivered to Spain’s legislature, and Spanish lawmakers responded with about seven minutes of applause.

Leo framed the appeal as more than a plea for restraint in one conflict. He said a truly democratic society must protect freedom of thought, conscience and religion, described human dignity as inviolable and not subject to shifting majorities, and said every human life must be safeguarded from conception to natural end. The Vatican also said he warned that new technologies and artificial intelligence require rigorous ethical oversight, while linking social stability to support for families.

The speech carried added political weight because Leo had met Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón at the Vatican on May 27, where talks covered conflicts worldwide, migration, multilateralism, respect for international law and support for peace. Sánchez has openly criticized the U.S. and Israel’s approach to the Iran war, and Leo has already defended his own stance after President Donald Trump attacked him for opposing the conflict.

Migration and the arms race ran through Leo’s wider message. He praised Spain’s historic role in shaping human rights and said the affirmation of human dignity cannot be abstract when people are forced to leave home in search of safety and a future. The Vatican itinerary for his June 6-12 trip to Spain also includes a June 11 meeting with organizations working with migrants in Arguineguín in Gran Canaria, underscoring how closely the pope is tying peace, borders and human mobility together.

The context is stark. Frontex says irregular border crossings into the European Union fell 26% in 2025 to almost 178,000, then dropped another 40% in the first four months of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, even as the Canary Islands route remains sensitive. Leo’s intervention was therefore both symbolic and strategic: a moral warning aimed at a world drifting toward harder lines on war, deterrence and migration, and an effort to give diplomacy a stronger public voice before those debates calcify.