SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LA LAGUNA, Spain — For Pope Leo XIV, it pays to have friends in high places — especially earthly ones.
Shortly after Leo closed his seven-day trip to Spain on Friday with an outdoor Mass in the Canary Islands, off the northwest coast of Africa, he arrived on board his chartered Iberia flight back to Rome. A few moments later, a dejected captain announced a system failure on board, and in no time, Spain’s King Filipe VI, who has been shadowing the first U.S.-born pontiff, boarded the plane and personally whisked Leo off as journalists in the back gaped.
A series of bizarre developments followed — including a suggestion from the captain that the engine had failed due to wind. Efforts to resolve the issue included taxiing on the tarmac in a way that felt like an attempt at a jump-start.
An even more dejected captain then announced that the problem was severe enough that those still left on board should exit the plane.
Soon, the Vatican put out a statement saying the king had offered Leo the services of his private Falcon jet for a flight to Rome — which Leo accepted, taking with him a handful of top Vatican officials and aides, skipping a planned in-flight news conference with reporters traditionally held on return papal flights.
Others Vatican clerics and staff got stuck with the roughly 80 traveling members of the Vatican Press Corps as Iberia dispatched a new plane from Madrid.
Papal flights have confronted issues before, largely due to weather. Pope John Paul II in 1988 was forced to land in apartheid-era South Africa, a country he had sought to avoid, after his flight to Lesotho encountered a violent storm.
The post Pope Leo had to catch a ride from the king of Spain after plane’s engine failed appeared first on Washington Post.
