Catalans were unimpressed when the Vatican published the missal for the Pope’s Mass at the Sagrada Família, with the text for his blessing of the Jesus Tower in Spanish.

Though other parts of the service were due to be in Catalan, this caused enough upset by the end of last week for the organisers to promise that at least a few words would also feature in the blessing. No sooner had things calmed down than a smart alec on the papal flight to Spain asked Leo about football – Real Madrid or Barcelona? “The Pope is for all teams, but Prevost is Real Madrid,” he replied, perhaps too candidly.

The next Clásico won’t be for a few months, but the Madristas won’t forget. On Monday, Leo presented a golden rose before the Virgin of Almudena, Madrid’s patroness to whom the team customarily present Champions League trophies, before visiting the Bernabéu where the club president showed him those same trophies in its museum. But even that’s easier to forgive than the cliché that opened his address to the 80,000 members of the diocesan community gathered in the stadium for an evening of prayer, dance and song: “Today the Church of Madrid scored a spectacular goal that will go down in history!”

The Vatican will be mighty pleased if a few footballing faux pas are all that mar the visit. As that papal speechwriter might put it, nobody expects Leo to keep a clean sheet (!) in Spain, when so many topics are politically fraught in ways a guiri like me can’t hope to understand. The Pope’s address to Las Cortes, the joint session of parliament, was charged with anxieties about the place of the Church in the history of the state and seriously opposed by secularist groups. The bishops’ years-long dispute with the government over abuse compensation remains raw after they finally reached a settlement in January.

Leo, totally at ease in Spanish and comfortable with the best liturgical and charitable traditions of the Church in Spain, could confront these challenges with conviction. “The Catholic Church is at the service of the thirst of the human heart,” he told the dignitaries in his first official address of the visit. On the flight to Madrid, he had reflected hopefully and modestly on the revival of interest in Christianity among young people in Spain, in response to a waggish question from one Christopher Lamb about competition from concerts by the Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny. An estimated 600,000 attended the prayer vigil in the Plaza de Lima that evening.

Even the Catalans had cheered up enough to give Leo a rapturous welcome on his arrival in their capital on Tuesday, and to applaud his few phrases of their language. But with FC Barcelona’s Camp Nou undergoing bank breaking renovations, the evening prayer vigil had to be held in the Olympic Stadium instead. ¡Hala Madrid!

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