We’ve shared last time the full English translation of Pope Leo XIV’s address to the Spanish Parliament. This time, we would like to share to you another impactful speech given in the Pope’s 2026 Apostolic Journey to Spain. This is the discourse on art and religion that the actor/director Antonio Banderas (you might also know him as the “Zorro”) gave before the Holy Father on 7 June 2026 in Movistar Arena (Madrid), the first discourse in the encounter of the Pope with Spanish civil society (arts, academe, sports, business, etc.)
I have been blessed to be in this event in person and Banderas’ speech is not only an celebration of religion, but a celebration of its intimate relationship with the arts and its power to transform humanity. I believe this speech is a powerful testimony on art’s place in humanity in this AI dominated age and having found no available English translation of the speech online (as of writing and publishing this), I have decided to translate it myself and make it available to the English reader (you can read the original Spanish here).
Antonio Banderas’ Full Speech Before the Pope
Authorities,
Dear friends,
There are encounters that are not only measured in time but in their meaning.
Holy Father, your presence today in Madrid is not just a visit. It’s a gesture. A gesture of listening, of closeness, of dialogue with civil society which, without doubt, thanks you for it.
That dialogue, sometimes, should be reinforced using a common language. That language is, and has been on many occasions throughout history, art.
The relationship between the Catholic Church and art has not only been fruitful: it has been decisive. We are not afraid to be wrong when we say that the church has been the greatest art producer in the history of humanity.
At the heart of that creative impulse is the one who crosses the centuries, styles, and cultures, and who has certainly been the most represented figure in the history of art: Jesus Christ. The great protagonist of the movie of life. In all the arts Christ is a constant presence. Not as a repeated image, but as an icon of peace, love, and sacrifice, surrounded by an inexhaustible mystery.
I could reduce my speech simply to listing the great artists who with their works have magnified the message coming from the word of Jesus.
At the heart of that creative impulse is the one who crosses the centuries, styles, and cultures, and who has certainly been the most represented figure in the history of art: Jesus Christ.
I could also limit myself to giving a series of data that illustrate the path traveled between the Church, artists, intellectuals, philosophers… but today, Holy Father, I feel a certain obligation to offer a little reflection out loud about my own experience.
For this I have to go back in time to the Holy Week celebrations in my beloved Malaga back in the 60’s of the last century. Those popular manifestations that take over the streets enveloping them with a majestic ritual of art and faith, of roots, and devotion. A multicolored polyhedron of elegant beauty, of theatrical liturgy that every year transforms the city into a space where the artistic and the spiritual merge.
And it was there, Holy Father, in that frame of anonymous popular art, when at only 4 or 5 years old, a question was born in me that only contained one word: God? Little by little I found answers, some as simple as the one I recognized in my mother’s eyes while she fixed her gaze and her devoted heart to the Virgin of Hope who passed on her throne in front of us in those distant years. Or through the voice that broke the clear spring air of the singers of saetas. Or among the humble and good people of my city who go out every year, and they take to the street with their neighborhood in tow, carrying their images that help them look for themselves while they look for God. And they do it leaving behind them the self, to cling to the we… from we they pass to them, from them to everyone, from everyone to the world, from the world to the universe, from the universe to God, and then they land again intuiting that God can be in every particle, in every molecule of every drop of water, of every sea, of every rose petal, of every heartbeat, of every sigh.
But art is not just beauty.
Art is a question.
It’s a reflection.
It’s a contrast.
It’s a revolution.
It’s a tension between what we know and what we intuit.
Art has been–and must continue to be–the mirror that reflects lives that pass by the wounded neighbor. It is also the denunciation of empty creeds that forgot love. It is the voice to alert societies that have become accustomed to injustice.
Art must be an alternative to violence
Art must be an alternative to violence. All violence. Just as Christ himself did, the artist must act with courage and not abandon being a critical instance to society, art itself, and religion itself.
Holy Father… we have to share an obligation. We are obliged to look, and to see, and to try to understand the complexities of the human soul.
All human beings face the great questions of our existence:
Who are we?
What is the meaning of life, and the pain?
What does it mean to love… really… your neighbor… like yourself?
What’s there beyond?
And in this search, we all approach, perhaps without knowing it, the transcendent.
Holy Father,
In a world that runs, that is fragmented, that is sometimes oversimplified, art helps us recover the depth and soul that is trying to be stolen by artificial intelligences that must be at the service of the human being and not the other way around.
A soul that whispers to us that there is something more. The constant whisper of hope for that something else. This meeting between the Church and civil society is not only timely: it is necessary.
We need to keep creating and sharing.
Keep asking.
Keep looking for beauty, yes… but also Truth.
Because where we dare to ask in depth, always, always, a path begins, a path that can lead us to the spiritual, which is nothing more than the fraternity that beats in the heart of every human being and in the mysterious heart of God.
“You say that times are bad. Be better yourselves and times will be better. You are the time,” Saint Augustine said.
Holy Father, I’m here for Godspell. Godspell is a musical play created in your country of origin. Godspell’s Spanish translation is “The Spell of God” (“El hechizo de Dios”). I am here today confessing to having been a victim of God’s spell.
Thank you very much.
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