The Vice President of the Government, Carmen Calvo, in her meeting with the Vatican Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, in October 2018. Ministry of the Presidency
The week was announced pronounced as the slope of Calvary.
The peak came Wednesday and Thursday in Congress, with the most conservative wing of the benches with knife in hand and a PP with its vote yet to be defined.
But at the end of the slope, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, knew he was waiting for a reward.
The photo with Pope Francis, the first time that the Pontiff received a Spanish president since April 2013 - when Mariano Rajoy visited him with his newly arrived wife Jorge Mario Bergoglio in the chair of Pedro - was an extraordinary wild card.
And he used it.
Before and also during the debate.
He cited his latest encyclical, referred to him as an "inspiring" figure, assured that "faith is essential" and came to question the Christian values of the leader of Vox and author of the motion of censure, Santiago Abascal.
The instrumentalization has been total.
This is exactly what the Vatican does not usually enthuse, which prefers to safeguard the figure of the Pope in the internal divisions of each country.
The Government is euphoric with the visit on Saturday (scheduled for 9:30).
It comes at a perfect moment to send the message that the president is not a radical leftist, as the opposition draws him, but an open man capable of getting on well with the head of the Catholic Church.
The Vatican, which has agreed to receive him at a strategic moment, well aware of the political impact it could have, had not officially announced this Thursday the visit of Pedro Sánchez.
But from Moncloa it was leaked last week and was later communicated in writing well in advance.
The president also announced during his trip to Rome on Tuesday, where he held a bilateral meeting with his counterpart Giuseppe Conte at the Italy-Spain forum, that he would invite the Pope to visit Spain "when best possible."
A movement that seeks to further strengthen ties with the Vatican at a time of extreme polarization around the figure of the Pontiff.
The open-minded vision of Pope Francis on some issues, especially of a social nature (such as his last comment in favor of civil unions between homosexuals), has generated an unusual division in the Church and in its surroundings of power.
His forays into politics, his criticisms of nationalism, populism or the building of walls were taken from the beginning as a kind of opposition to the extreme right movements and, specifically, to the President of the United States, Donald Trump.
In the heat of the faithful of the North American president, part of the American Church was also organized, with prominent cardinals, such as Raymond Burke, waging a battle in broad daylight against the Pope.
The division has spread to other countries, it also happened in Italy when Matteo Salvini was Minister of the Interior and daily lashed out at the NGOs that rescued migrants in the Mediterranean.
But Spain had not yet arrived until Vox picked up the baton.
Santiago Abascal called the Pope a “citizen of Bergoglio” last April, lowering his status as Pontiff for having demonstrated in favor of a universal salary.
When the Vox leader traveled to Rome in September 2019 to participate in the annual meeting organized by the post-fascist party Fratelli di Italia, he visited the Vatican and met with the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah: one of the strongest ideological opponents of the Pope within the walls.
Hence the first words that Sánchez pronounced regarding the Pontiff before his visit.
"His figure is unquestionable," he said with an unnecessary statement in a normal situation and positioning himself frontally against his critics.
A move that also allows him to get closer to the moderate Catholic world.
The hand of the Pope, after almost eight years of pontificate, is already strongly noticeable in Spain, where the most conservative sector has been losing power.
After the appointment of the cardinal and archbishop of Barcelona, Juan José Omella as president of the Episcopal Conference (on Wednesday and Thursday he was in the Vatican), movements have also started in the dioceses.
The harmony with the Government, which has thorny issues on the table that must be agreed with the Church, such as the publication of the list of unregistered assets - prepared for a year and a half in the Ministry of Justice - and the decision to pay the IBI for their properties, it seems good.
Government sources indicate that negotiations in these fields are going very well.
The Executive does not renounce any of these bets, but wants to do so in tune with the Church.
The meeting, however, should not go down there. The same sources insist that these issues are matters of the bilateral relationship of the Church and the Government and will not be discussed in the conversation between Sánchez and Francisco. The appointment, they believe, will have a more fundamental character and will touch on issues such as the content of
Fratelli Tutti
, the last encyclical of the Pope, which Pedro Sánchez has already mentioned in some forums before also doing it in Congress last Wednesday. Furthermore, issues such as immigration, poverty or the cohesion of Europe will have their place. The position of the Pope on social and economic issues, also in ecology, has always been in tune with that of Sánchez, and in La Moncloa they believe that there will be many more agreements than disagreements, which undoubtedly exist between the Vatican and a government like the Spaniard who has already promoted a law on euthanasia, which is being processed, and is studying another on abortion.
