Pope Calls on Secular Spain to Put Religion First Again

Midway through a six-day Spanish visit in grueling heat, a tired Pope John Paul II brought a get-with-the-program message to Spain’s capital Tuesday: Live your faith, he told a nation weaned on Roman Catholicism but lately wed to secular materialism.

“In a pluralistic society like yours, it is necessary to establish a greater and more incisive Catholic presence in all areas of public life . . . in the family, in the schools, in cultural life and in politics,” John Paul said.

The 73-year-old pontiff, who stoically endured the broiling heat of southern Andalusia for three days before flying here Tuesday, spoke during the consecration of Madrid’s new cathedral, completed a few days ago after 110 years of sporadic construction.

The papal message for nominally Catholic Spain was a call for “new evangelization.” Reducing religion to a strictly private sphere “is unacceptable,” he said.

The Pope’s Spanish tour, less than a year after intestinal surgery, has been marked by a hectic pace of appearances before an adoring public in the energy-sapping heat. In Seville on Sunday, he visibly wilted under the midday sun. He was helped up and down the steps of an outdoor altar.

Moving slowly but deliberately, John Paul has made a point of reaching out to the hundreds of thousands of well-wishers who turned out to cheer him.

A quarter of a million people are expected for a papal Mass today in Madrid’s vast Plaza Colon.

In context, Spain’s enthusiastic welcome for a Pope who has now visited four times since 1982 belies the diminished role of the church in Spanish society.

John Paul’s consecration of Madrid’s first cathedral comes at a time when religious devotion here is perhaps at its lowest ebb in five centuries. A recent government poll of Spaniards between 16 and 30 found that 92% believe divorce is acceptable, 88% that premarital sex is and 68% that abortion laws should be liberalized.

John Paul has deplored such attitudes and urged Catholics on Tuesday to re-establish the primacy of religion in their lives.

“Go out into the street and live your faith,” he told worshipers at the new Almudena Cathedral.

Although Madrid boasts several impressive, centuries-old churches, it has never had a cathedral before now because the capital was long part of the diocese of Toledo, 43 miles to the south.