Published on
13/06/2026 - 10:51 GMT+2
The picture was taken by Emilio Morenatti, an AP photographer and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, during the popemobile tour through Barcelona last Tuesday. In the image at the top of this article, Pope Leo XIV gazes intently at a boy and holds both his hands as the two smile.
Morenatti later said the photograph was only possible because he broke with the routine photographers usually follow at this kind of event. 'Covering a papal visit is often frustrating, because we are confined to fixed positions with little freedom to look for other angles,' he explained. This time, however, he managed to slip past the security cordon and climbed onto a chair among the crowd.
With his lens at full zoom and the aperture as wide as it would go, he found a gap in the crowd just as the popemobile was passing in front of him. He fired off shots for a few seconds and, he said, immediately felt he had the picture he was looking for.
