SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LA LAGUNA, Spain — For Pope Leo XIV, it pays to have friends in high places — especially earthly ones.

Shortly after Leo closed his seven-day trip to Spain on Friday with an outdoor Mass in the Canary Islands, off the northwest coast of Africa, he arrived on board his chartered Iberia flight back to Rome. A few moments later, a dejected captain announced a system failure on board, and in no time, Spain’s King Filipe VI, who has been shadowing the first U.S.-born pontiff, boarded the plane and personally whisked Leo off as journalists in the back gaped.