Just weeks before Pope Leo XIV’s apostolic visit to Spain, the Spanish Bishops’ Conference (CEE, by its Spanish acronym) released a document that establishes seven pastoral priorities for the 2026–2030 period in which they embrace a bracing challenge: “We cannot just stand by and watch the ship sink.”
The document, titled “Set Out on the Journey,” was approved during the plenary assembly in November 2025 but was not published until after the conferenceʼs meeting in April.
Following an exercise in “conversation in the Spirit” — the same method used during the Synod on Synodality — the Spanish prelates established the following seven priority pastoral goals:
1. Proclaiming the Gospel and initiation into the Christian life
The prelates observed that “in Spain, the era — firmly established for centuries — in which we would say, ‘I am Catholic because I was born in Spain,’ has passed. We can no longer take Christian conversion for granted.”
Consequently, the catechumenate is an “indispensable” reality in the dioceses, serving to ensure the continued growth of impactful experiences following the initial proclamation of the Gospel. “Today, Christian initiation along with the creation of communities that accompany individuals through this process and welcome the newly initiated constitute a fundamental priority,” they stated.
The bishops further emphasized that “in secularized Spanish society, the Church’s challenge is not so much atheism as it is the hunger for God, which manifests itself in very diverse ways,” such that all pastoral actions “should assess their impact on the initial proclamation.”
2. Celebrating Sunday
Added to the challenge of Christian initiation is “another great challenge of ecclesial life: the celebration of the Lord’s Day” — that is, participation in Sunday Mass, which, as the prelates underscored, “is not a mere act of private devotion or fulfilling an obligation but rather the experience of being an assembly of the called — those who, summoned by the Word, are gathered together as a people taking the form of the body of Christ, in order to be sent forth on mission.”
In Spain, only about 8 million of the country’s 45 million inhabitants attend Mass regularly on Sundays.
3. A Church with fewer people but a lot of parishes
The bishops’ third pastoral concern stems from the realization that the Catholic Church in Spain has more than 22,000 parishes distributed across over 11,000 municipalities and smaller local entities, many of which have fewer than 100 inhabitants.
This distribution reveals “a great asymmetry.” As the prelates expressed with concern, “many baptismal fonts ‘hold no water’ — that is to say, there is no Christian community that, under the action of the Spirit, possesses the capacity to bring forth new Christians.”
On the other hand, in areas with larger populations, the parish community “possesses a very weak awareness of the responsibility entailed by the baptismal font.”
Beyond the diocesan parochial structure, Spain is home to 1,400 monasteries and shrines as well as hundreds of non-parochial churches where the Sunday Eucharist is celebrated, institutions that are typically under the care of religious communities.
In this regard, the prelates declared: “We cannot simply stand by and watch the ship sink.”
4. Promoting formative communities
Given that “one has never been able to be a Christian alone,” the prelates consider it necessary to “offer a visible communal face” and to foster the creation of communities “where the integral formation of the heart may be lived out.”
The bishops acknowledged that, despite experiences of initial proclamation, “at times there exists the difficulty of transforming emotion into virtue,” as noted in the recently published document “Cor ad cor loquitur” (“Heart Speaks to Heart”).
In this regard, they consider the integration of Catholic immigrants to be a “great opportunity to revive and rejuvenate” the communities.
5. Living the faith in a pluralistic society
The Spanish prelates focused their attention on the pluralistic social reality in which “people of diverse ethnic origins, with diverse ideological, ethical, and religious worldviews” coexist — and not always “in a proper spirit of coexistence, but rather they fall into confrontation.”
Given that “the religious map of Spain is changing” and there are “increasingly more adherents of other religions who do not come ‘from abroad,’” this poses “a new challenge for the Church, which must establish channels for coexistence based on mutual respect and the fundamental right to religious freedom.”
6. Welcome, protect, promote, and integrate migrants
The bishops’ conference also takes into account the need to address the reality of increasing migration, in a twofold sense.
“Catholics must be incorporated into the Christian community”; therefore, the CEE called for an effort to welcome them by “offering the possibility of a space of their own that does not break off communion with the whole.”
With regard to those of other faiths, the prelates highlighted the “opportunity for interreligious dialogue and collaboration in the service of the common good,” while acknowledging that this constitutes “a challenge for Catholics, who must be formed in order to engage in dialogue based on mutual respect.”
7. Bringing the love of the heart of Christ to the world
Beyond matters more specific to the Spanish context, the prelates, in their latest pastoral guidance, aim to make the love of God present beyond the confines of the Church: “It is essential to practice political charity in schools, in neighborhoods, in hospitals, and in our relationships with one another — fostering a presence, where possible, within institutional politics, the life of political parties, or other channels of institutional action.”
In the charitable sphere, the bishops also warned that “we run the risk that our organizations — so dependent on the welfare state, its regulations, and its subsidies for the third sector — may offer the novelty of Christian love in a weak manner and be easily confused with NGOs [nongovernmental organizations]. The same could happen to us in our educational institutions or our media outlets.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.
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