When he took office as president, Pere Aragones set as a priority to recover the international agenda of the Generalitat that both the pandemic and the acceleration of the ‘procés’ had deteriorated. Two years later, this Monday the meeting will add of more relevance of his mandate. According to sources from the Generalitat this Friday, the president will travel to Vatican City to be received in private audience by the Pope Francisco. The meeting will be at 9 a.m. in the private library of the Apostolic Palace.
From the Palau de la Generalitat they defend the importance of the event, since until now the only president of the Generalitat received by the Pope in the Vatican It was Jordi Pujol in 1981, in that case by John Paul II. It is true that in 2002 the same pope received in audience Artur Mas, but then he was ‘conseller en cap’ and not president. The other precedents for meetings between a president and the pontiff are already in Catalonia: Pujol again with John Paul II in 1982, and José Montilla with Benedict XVI in Barcelona in 2010.
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Aragonese He requested the audience by letter on June 22, after meeting with the cardinal archbishop of Barcelona, Joan Josep Omella. In it he alluded to the relations between the Catalan institutions and the Vatican, in addition to the proximity of two “relevant” events in Catalonia: the 2025 celebration of the millennium of the Montserrat Abbey and the upcoming completion of the works of the sacred Family. Confirmation that the meeting would take place came by letter from the Vatican on July 1 also by letter.
The president travels to the Vatican after completing the negotiation with the PSOE about the investiture. An agreement that includes an amnesty law and the resumption of the dialogue table to address the “political conflict” between Catalonia and the rest of Spain. One of the points of attention of the trip will be how Aragonés conveys the political situation of Catalonia and its relations with the State.