Peculiar alliance with visiting pope a blessing for Spain’s Sánchez – POLITICO

MADRID — Pope Leo XIV has embarked on a weeklong visit to Spain at a politically convenient moment for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whose scandal-hit government finds itself on the same side as the pontiff on some of the most contentious issues in global politics.

Pope Leo has become one of the Catholic Church’s most outspoken advocates for migrants, calling on leaders to treat migrants “with dignity” while criticizing the U.S. government’s approach as “inhumane.”

In contrast to many of his European counterparts, Sánchez has defended immigration on both economic and humanitarian grounds, and his government is in the process of regularizing the status of at least 500,000 undocumented migrants.