Bad Bunny accepts the award for album of the year for "Debí Tirar Más Fotos" during the 68th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026, in Los Angeles. Pope Leo XIV met with Bad Bunny during his final hours in Madrid, June 9, 2026. (AP/Chris Pizzello)
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After three days of tense "will they, won't they?" speculation looming large over Pope Leo XIV's trip to Spain, the pontiff met privately with Puerto Rican reggaeton sensation Bad Bunny during his final hours in Madrid.
Leo, who leads the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, met Tuesday (June 9) with the international star born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, the four-time most-streamed artist of the year on Spotify, who has racked up more than 123 billion streams on the platform.
Following an event with the local church in Madrid's marquee soccer stadium, the pope met with the "King of Latin Trap," a bass-heavy mix of rap and reggaeton, "along with his family and other people to whom he offered a brief greeting before leaving the stadium," the Vatican confirmed the following day.
Bad Bunny won album of the year at this year's Grammy Awards for his record "Debí Tirar Más Fotos" ("I Should Have Taken More Photos") — yet neither the Vatican nor the music star has released images of the meeting which had been speculated for weeks.
Asked on his flight from Rome how he expected Spain's young people to respond to his visit, Leo acknowledged that he would be competing for their attention with one of the world's biggest pop stars who was holding two concerts in the Spanish capital that overlapped with Leo's visit.
"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," he said. "But I think there will also be a few here to see the pope, and that says something."
In the end, the competition wasn't so stiff. The pope's prayer vigil for young people on his first night in Madrid ended up drawing more than half a million people.
Pope Leo XIV holds a prayer vigil at Plaza de Lima in Madrid June 6, 2026, during his apostolic journey to Spain. (OSV News/Reuters/Mohammad Salem)
The meeting between the Roman pontiff and the reggaeton sensation also brought together two figures who have found themselves in the virtual crosshairs of President Donald Trump.
Trump called Bad Bunny's performance at Super Bowl LX — a celebration of Latino culture widely seen as a critique of the administration's policies targeting Latino immigrants — "an affront to the Greatness of America."
"Nobody understands a word this guy is saying," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, referring to Bad Bunny's halftime show, the first by a solo Latino artist, which was performed in Spanish.
The Puerto Rico native also said he intentionally did not include any U.S. stops on his four-continent, 23-city world tour out of fear that his mostly Latino fanbase would be targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) outside his concerts.
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About two months after Trump's post on Bad Bunny, the president lodged a vicious attack against Leo following a "60 Minutes" segment in which three prominent U.S. cardinals cited the pope's teachings to push back on the administration's treatment of migrants.
Trump called Leo "WEAK on crime" and "terrible on Foreign Policy" in a Truth Social post shortly after the program, prompting a response from Leo who said he had "no fear" of the Trump administration and would continue preaching the Gospel.
Ahead of the pope's visit to Spain, Cardinal José Cobo Cano of Madrid, who sat alongside the pope in the city's Santiago Bernabeu stadium called a potential meeting between the leader of the world's largest church and most popular musical artist an opportunity to "build bridges" and said it would "not be a conflict."
The National Catholic Reporter's Rome Bureau is made possible in part by the generosity of Joan and Bob McGrath.
