Spain's Queen Letizia Walks Arm-in-Arm With King Felipe to Pope Francis’s Funeral (2025)

Queen Letizia and King Felipe walked arm-in-arm into St. Peter’s Square for the funeral of Pope Francis in Vatican City on Saturday morning.

The queen wore a somber black lace veil with a long black dress and what appeared to be an heirloom tassel brooch that belonged to the King's great-grandmother, Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain.

The Spanish royals were seated in the front row of a section reserved for royals, heads of state, and foreign dignitaries. Estonian President Alar Karis sat to the right of King Felipe, and directly to Karis’s right was First Lady Melania Trump and President Trump.

As heads of one of the few remaining Catholic monarchies in Europe, King Felipe and Queen Letizia were among the first royals to confirm they would be attending the funeral following the death of Pope Francis earlier this week.

King Felipe and Queen Letizia, then Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia, were among the royals who attended Pope Francis’s inaugural mass in 2013. The following year, the royal couple met with Pope Francis for a private audience in June 2014 in Vatican City.

In the wake of the news of the pope's death on Monday, King Felipe remembered the late Pope Francis in a moving letter. “Throughout his pontificate, His Holiness Pope Francis has borne witness to the importance that love of neighbor, fraternity, and social friendship have for the world of our century,” King Felipe wrote in a telegram to Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Dean of the College of Cardinals. “We will always continue to be inspired by his conviction in the need to bring encouragement and comfort to the poorest and most needy, and by the importance he attached to dialogue and consensus in order to achieve a more just and united world.” (Read it in full, here, in Spanish.)

King Felipe and Queen Letizia were also joined by Queen Sofia of Spain, the King’s mother, on a visit to the Apostolic Nunciature in Madrid on Tuesday to sign a condolence book for the late pontiff. For the visit, Queen Letizia wore a black Carolina Herrera midi dress paired with a Boss “Amie” leather belt, Massimo Dutti slingback heels, and Chanel’s “Plume de Chanel” diamond earrings in 18-karat white gold.