Pope Leo XIV's visit to Barcelona
as a media volunteer
Inside the press operation for a papal visit: accreditation, the vigil, and the correspondents covering the mass.
Context
In June 2026, Pope Leo XIV visited Barcelona — a major international event that drew press from around the world, including the Vatican's own correspondents. The visit spanned several venues across the city, each operating as a working newsroom under heavy security and tight broadcast deadlines. I worked as a media volunteer across two days and three shifts, at the heart of the press operation.
What I did
My role was to make the journalists' work possible. On the first morning I was at the media center in Fira de Barcelona, issuing press accreditations and giving correspondents the information they needed to move around the event. That afternoon I was at the Olympic Stadium for the vigil, part of the operation receiving the Pope. The following afternoon I was at the Sagrada Família media center, accompanying Vatican correspondents into the basilica and helping them broadcast and report on the mass — then stepping outside for the inauguration and blessing of the Tower of Jesus Christ.
The angle
This is media relations in its most immediate form. The correspondents were often foreign, working against broadcast deadlines, in venues they didn't know, under security constraints that made every movement slower. My job was to remove that friction: get them accredited, get them oriented, get them where they needed to be in time to file. Working with the Vatican press corps in particular meant supporting some of the most experienced religious-affairs journalists in the world at the moment they most needed things to run smoothly.
Takeaways
Two days inside a global press operation taught me how international media works from the inside — how correspondents move, what they need, and how much of a successful broadcast depends on the people making it logistically possible. It's the clearest experience I have of communications as a service to the press: not writing the story myself, but making sure the people telling it to the world could do so without obstacles.
Pope Leo XIV’s entrance to the Olympic Stadium
Mass inside Sagrada Familia
Blessing of the Tower of Jesus and fireworks festival