Pope Leo XIV stood before the nearly complete nave of Barcelona's Sagrada Família basilica on Tuesday and inaugurated the Tower of Jesus Christ — the central and tallest of Antoni Gaudí's planned eighteen towers — in a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the Catalan architect's death and completing a construction project that began 143 years ago.
A Century in the Making
Gaudí died on June 10, 1926, struck by a tram three days earlier and unrecognized in the street because of his plain clothing. He had dedicated the final fifteen years of his life entirely to the Sagrada Família, sleeping in the crypt and refusing payment. He told associates the cathedral was not for his generation but for the ones that would come after. One hundred years after his burial in the crypt below the altar he never saw completed, the tallest Catholic church in the world now rises above his grave.
The Tower of Jesus Christ stands at 172.5 meters — approximately 564 feet — surpassing Ulm Minster in Germany, which had held the record for the world's tallest church since 1890. The tower is crowned with a twelve-pointed illuminated star visible from thirty kilometers away across the Mediterranean coast on a clear night.
The First American Pope in Barcelona
Leo XIV — born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, Illinois — was elected to the papacy in May 2025, becoming the first North American to lead the Catholic Church. His visit to Barcelona is the second leg of his first European pilgrimage as pope, following two days in Rome. He arrived Monday to a crowd estimated by local authorities at several hundred thousand people lining the Avenida Diagonal from the airport to the city center.
Before the Sagrada Família Mass, the pope visited Brians 2 prison on the outskirts of Barcelona, meeting with inmates and correction officers in what his communications office described as an intentional echo of Gaudí's spirit — the architect who was buried as a pauper and lived without distinction of station. He also celebrated private prayer at the Abbey of Montserrat in the Catalan interior, a pilgrimage site active since the thirteenth century.
Chicago Wakes Up Early
In Chicago, where Leo XIV's former parish in the Pilsen neighborhood organized a public viewing of the Mass projected onto a screen in the churchyard, several hundred parishioners gathered before 4 a.m. local time. "He is one of us," said a longtime parishioner who described attending the same church as the pope when he was still a young priest assigned to the archdiocese. "Seeing him stand in that basilica today felt like something different from everything else that has happened."
The Catholic community in the United States, which counts approximately 71 million members according to the Pew Research Center, has followed Leo XIV's papacy with particular intensity. His election last year generated the largest single-day traffic spike in the history of the Vatican News website, according to figures released by Vatican communications staff at the time.
What Gaudí Could Not Have Imagined
Construction on the Sagrada Família began in 1882 under a different architect; Gaudí took over in 1883 and transformed it entirely. When he died, less than a quarter of the structure was complete. Raids on Barcelona in 1938 destroyed his original drawings, models, and plaster casts, forcing later architects to reconstruct his vision from photographs and secondary sources.
The team that completed the Tower of Jesus Christ used parametric modeling and stone-cutting robots to realize geometry Gaudí designed by hanging chains upside down and photographing their natural curves as an analog for the ideal load-bearing arch. The technical team at the Sagrada Família Foundation spent eleven years on the tower alone.
Pope Leo XIV, who spent time with the construction team before the ceremony, was asked by a Vatican journalist whether Gaudí would have recognized the finished building. He paused before answering. "He would have recognized the intention," the pope said, according to a pool reporter present. "That is what counts."