MADRID — It was the will-they, won’t-they question that preoccupied Spain for days: Would the stars align for a supernova meeting between Pope Leo XIV and Bad Bunny — two wildly different Spanish-speaking American icons — who happened to be in Madrid at the same time?
Leo is here on his first trip to a predominantly Catholic Western country for a seven-day visit that will also take him to Barcelona and the Canary Islands. Bad Bunny is also on tour, performing a run of 10 concerts in the Spanish capital.
For days, it was unclear if the Holy Father and Puerto Rican King of Latin Trap would cross paths. Rumors swirled.
And on Tuesday evening, the Vatican announced that in fact, the pope and the pop star had met — just not in a highly anticipated public encounter the press and the masses could witness.
Instead, Leo held a private audience with Bad Bunny — born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio — and his family backstage at Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu stadium following a papal event Monday night that drew a crowd of some 80,000.
The encounter between the pope and Bad Bunny, a former altar boy who was raised in the home of devout Puerto Rican Catholics and is not known to be currently religious, briefly joined, albeit in private, two symbols of President Donald Trump’s wrath.
One is the first U.S.-born pope and leader of the world’s largest Christian faith who has condemned the war in Iran and called the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration “inhuman.”
The other is a saucy superstar whose Super Bowl halftime show in February brought MAGA condemnations for invoking a pluralistic, Spanish-speaking vision of American identity.
Bad Bunny initiated the request for a meeting, a person familiar with the discussions told The Washington Post on Sunday.
Thus far, neither the Vatican nor Bad Bunny have shared any photos of their meeting. By sidestepping an onstage joint appearance, Leo may have made a Solomon-like choice. He met youth culture where it exists — but without allowing it to upstage his main message in Spain, which is about fighting polarization in the West.
A joint public appearance could easily have stoked what Leo is trying to squash, opening the pope to potential criticism — perhaps even a blistering presidential social media post (which still might come) — from Trump supporters who have taken aim at Bad Bunny for his proud embrace of Spanish, explicit lyrics, gender-fluid style and unapologetic opposition to raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Some, however, doubted Leo had rationalized it that far.
“Everything the pope does isn’t about Trump,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior analyst with the Religion News Service.
“They happened to be in the same city at the same time, but I don’t think the Vatican wanted it to become the central focus of his trip to Spain,” Reese said. “He’s there to get his message out, not to have a photo op with Bad Bunny.”
Bad Bunny and Leo may have radically different personas, but when it comes to pluralist visions, they are brothers in arms.
Leo, who became a naturalized dual citizen of Peru while serving there as a missionary and bishop, speaks fluent Spanish — albeit with an accent — and has gone out of his way to sidestep overt references to American patriotism.
Leo, aboard the papal flight, noted that he would be competing for attention with Bad Bunny in Madrid. Leo said he hoped young people “are looking for something more … [a] spiritual dimension in their lives. They realize there’s an emptiness, and a lack of a sense of meaning.”
“If they are confronted with the question do they want to see Bad Bunny or do they want to see the pope, I think many will see Bad Bunny,” Leo said. “But I think there will also be a few here to see the pope. And that says something.”
In fact, thus far, Leo has proved the bigger draw — closing in on nearly 2 million in-person spectators at his various events with some of the biggest crowds of his 13-month papacy. That far exceeds the 500,000 fans paying upward of $80 each for Bad Bunny’s concerts in Madrid. The pope, of course, does not charge admission.
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