VATICAN CITY — VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV travels Saturday to the principality of Monaco, becoming the first pope in nearly five centuries to visit the glitzy Mediterranean enclave and highlighting how small states can punch above their weight on the global stage.

Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni said the visit would provide the American pope with his first real chance to speak to all of Europe.

“In the Bible, it is precisely the small ones who play a significant role,” Bruni said.

Monaco is also one of the few European countries where Catholicism is the official state religion. And Prince Albert recently refused a proposal to legalize abortion, citing the important role Catholicism plays in Monaco society.

The decision was largely symbolic, since abortion is a constitutional right in France, which surrounds the coastal principality of 2.2 square kilometers ( about 1 square mile).

In refusing to allow it in Monaco, Albert joined other European Catholic royals who have taken a similar stand over the years to uphold Catholic doctrine on an increasingly secular continent. When Pope Francis visited Belgium in 2024, he announced he was putting the late King Baudouin on the path to possible sainthood because he abdicated for a day in 1990 rather than approve legislation to legalize abortion.

Bruni said the “defense of life” would be one of the themes of Leo’s one-day visit Saturday. But he stressed that Leo’s vision would be in the larger context of defending all life, including in wars and conflicts.

The visit includes a private meeting with Albert and Princess Charlene at the palace, a meeting with Monaco’s Catholic community in the cathedral and Mass in the sports stadium.

A coastal playground for the rich and famous, Monaco is renowned as much for its tax-friendly incentives and Formula 1 Grand Prix as its glamorous royal family. The son of the late American actress Grace Kelly, Albert spoke in perfect, unaccented English when he visited the Chicago-born Leo at the Vatican on Jan. 17 and invited him to visit.

The trip came together quickly after that, and raised eyebrows about why Leo had chosen Monaco, a hereditary and constitutional monarchy, as his first foreign trip in Europe. Pope Francis also liked to travel to small countries, but Monaco’s glitz factor likely would have turned him off.

“It does raise questions,” conceded Abbe Christian Venard, spokesperson for the diocese of Monaco. “Is it really the place for a pope to go to a principality better known — somewhat caricatured — as a haven for billionaires, even if that is part of Monaco’s reality? I think it reflects some inner freedom from the pope,” he told The Associated Press.

In fact, there are good reasons for Leo to visit, not least because there hasn’t been a pope who visited in 488 years, since Pope Paul III in 1538.

Monaco’s population of 38,000 is heavily Catholic and also multinational, with only a fifth of the population actually citizens of the principality.

Leo will be in Monaco for just under nine hours, and the principality is so close to home that he can get there and back to the Vatican by helicopter. But the visit is rich in symbolic significance, since it represents the leaders of the world’s two smallest states coming together to talk about some of the world’s biggest problems.

With Russia’s war in Ukraine raging and the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran spreading, Leo will likely want to repeat his appeal for peace and dialogue to prevail.

“Much like the principality’s role in fostering dialogue and mediation, serving as a laboratory for peace, social friendship, and the responsible use of influence and wealth,” Bruni said.

That is a reference to Monaco’s financial support of initiatives to help Christians in the Middle East, including its participation in the Aliph Foundation, which works in particular to rebuild and restore churches and other sites of cultural importance that get damaged or destroyed by conflict.

The government has also been a longtime supporter of church projects in Lebanon organized by l’Œuvre d’Orient, a French-based group that supports bishops, priests and religious orders working in 23 countries.

Albert is also a well-known environmental campaigner, and Monaco hosts regular international conferences, especially on the plight of the Mediterranean. Leo has strongly carried on Francis’ legacy of ecological stewardship, and the environment is expected to be a topic of discussion.

“The fact that Monaco hosts environmental forums, scientific conferences, and thematic summits makes sense and effectively counterbalances the somewhat ‘glitzy’ image that the event might initially convey,” noted François Mabille, director of the Geopolitical Observatory of Religion at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs.

Mabille said it is precisely on issues such as the environment where two small states with similar values can work together on the global stage, especially when the Holy See has a tradition of diplomatic neutrality and only enjoys observer status at the United Nations and other international organizations.

“What’s interesting is to realize that there is indeed a Monaco foreign policy that can, in a way, enable or allow the Vatican to go further,’’ Mabille said. “And here, the Vatican’s soft power can find … a sort of continuity and, in any case, a convergence with another small state — one that, this time, votes and participates.”

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Corbet contributed from Paris.

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