Pope’s Spanish trip to reflect clash of values

POPE Benedict XVI meets Spain’s Facebook generation this weekend — setting up a clash of values and lifestyles in a once-staunchly Catholic nation that has become one of Europe’s most liberal.

The visit is part of a major Vatican push to make increasingly secular Europe re-embrace its Christian roots. But the Pope faces a big challenge in a nation that has undergone an extraordinary social transformation in just the past few years — with laws allowing gay marriage, fast-track divorce and easier abortions.

These changes are the latest, perhaps most dramatic, chapter in Spain’s reinvention after the deeply conservative dictatorship of Gen Francisco Franco, who died in 1975.