BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Pope Leo XIV locked eyes with the 7-year-old boy, holding both his hands as the two smiled at one another. Captured by Associated Press chief photographer Emilio Morenatti, the moment resonated first with onlookers and then with many others around the world.
As perfectly-timed as Morenatti's photo was, what happened after made it even more captivating. Its publication and a post by Morenatti on the social platform X set off a search by internet sleuths for the boy's parents, who believed they had witnessed a miracle and likewise were trying to find Morenatti.
The pope shares moments with individuals all the time, especially on trips abroad, but there was something about this particular instance that stirred emotion. Here's what Morenatti, a two-time Pulitzer-winning photographer, had to say about this extraordinary photo:
“In photojournalism, a photograph should do more than document an event. It should convey a feeling, evoke an emotion and hold the viewer’s attention long enough to spark a thought, even if only for a brief moment.”
“I have always believed that if a photograph moves me while I am making it, there is a good chance it will move others as well,” he added. “When that happens, the image transcends the simple recording of a moment and gains a deeper power.”
When Montse Martínez, 36, and her husband first heard of Leo’s upcoming visit to the Sagrada Familia basilica, it felt like stars aligning. Such is their devotion to the Catalan architect who designed the church, Antoni Gaudí, that they named their newborn after him. For nine straight days they prayed before an image of Gaudí, who’s on the path to possible sainthood, asking him to grant them tickets to see the pope.
Their wish came true, and they were among the 40,000 faithful gathered for Leo’s prayer vigil on Tuesday. A security guard noticed their baby and handed him to the pope, who gave the crying infant a blessing. The guard came back for 7-year-old Joaquim.
“He was so moved that he could only smile, he couldn’t speak,” Martínez said of Joaquim’s few seconds with the pope in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday.
And it was at that precise moment that Morenatti snapped his photo.
This photo was only possible because Morenatti felt compelled to seek out a unique angle.
“Covering a papal visit is often frustrating for photographers. We are usually confined to positions assigned by the organizers, with little freedom to move in search of better angles," he said. On this occasion, however, he managed to get past the security cordon and join a crowd gathered along one section of the route to watch the Popemobile pass by.
“Standing on a chair among the crowd, I could see the Popemobile approaching through a sea of waving hands and flags. Then I noticed a small gap in front of me — a narrow opening through which a photograph might be possible."
“My 50–150 mm f/2 lens was already zoomed to its maximum focal length and opened to its widest aperture. I quickly checked that both faces were sharp and that the frame was clean, with everything positioned neatly beneath the windshield of the Popemobile. I pressed the shutter for a few seconds and immediately sensed that I had the photograph I had been searching for,” he said. “A wave of emotion washed over me, followed by relief. The image I had imagined was finally there, safely stored on my memory card.”
Morenatti didn't just publish the photo for AP clients. He also posted the image to X, asking for help finding the boy's family so he could give them a printed copy.
“They had to see this photo. And I needed to tell them how moved I was by their son,” Morenatti said.
His post went viral, racking up more than half a million views and hundreds of comments. Even the Catholic Church in Barcelona chimed in, asking — in the local Catalan language — for people to assist. And one of the region's most-read newspapers wrote a story about the search.
Joaquim's parents were unaware of this campaign. But they had seen Morenatti's photo on the website of top local newspaper La Vanguardia and started working to track him down. They found his name with the help of ChatGPT and messaged him directly on Instagram. Morenatti responded and they spoke by phone, touched by the speed with which they found each other.
The family is thrilled they will soon obtain the printed image, which they will hang in their home in a village outside Barcelona.
“We haven’t figured out yet where to place it, but it will be in a very special place,” Martínez said, adding that she hopes it will help plant the seed of faith in her five children. Perhaps, she said, her son's short private audience with the pope could even be included in Gaudí's canonization dossier.
“For us, it’s a miracle of Antoni Gaudí. It’s a gift of God, who has these tender gestures of love for his children.”
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Pope Leo XIV blesses a child before a prayer vigil at Lluis Companys Olympic Stadium in Barcelona, Spain, Tuesday, June 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
NEW YORK (AP) — Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire after shares of his rocket company SpaceX soared in Wall Street's biggest initial public offering of stock.
Shares in SpaceX jumped more than 19% after opening for trading at noon Friday, a sign that investors are looking past the billions the company is losing and instead betting that its massive investments in satellites, orbital data centers and artificial intelligence will pay off in the future.
SpaceX opened at $150 a share, then rose to around $168, before finishing the day just above $161. That price gave the company a market value of $2.1 trillion, making it the sixth largest public U.S. company — larger even than its founder and CEO's other big business, the electric vehicle maker Tesla.
Between his holdings in SpaceX and Tesla, where he is also CEO, Musk is now worth an estimated $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes.
Musk says SpaceX, founded in 2002, is going public now because it needs money to fund its ambitions of putting satellites and data centers in space and eventually establishing a colony of people on Mars.
He marked the opening of trading on Nasdaq by joining a ceremonial bell ringing from Starbase, the South Texas home of SpaceX.
He reiterated his lofty goals “to make life multiplanetary.”
“Not just a few astronauts, I mean literally you,” Musk said. “Whoever you are watching this, SpaceX wants to be able to take you to the moon, take you to Mars and ultimately beyond.”
Known for his technological breakthroughs, as well as wild claims and missed deadlines, Musk was able to whip up enthusiasm for the IPO. The typical company going public has seen a 7% jump in its first day of trading, from 1980 through 2025, according to Jay Ritter, a professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business.
Institutional and retail investors alike jumped at the opportunity to buy a piece of the company at $135 per share before trading began. The $75 billion in proceeds SpaceX raised easily topped the previous record IPO from oil giant Saudi Aramco in 2019.
In addition to establishing a one-million person Martian colony, the company has promised to save humanity by establishing other outposts in space, launch data centers the size of football fields into orbit and outdo rivals Anthropic and OpenAI in the race to make money from artificial intelligence.
To reach its goals, SpaceX needs billions more than it currently takes in from its rocket and satellite business. Between the start of 2025 and March 31, 2026, the company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., lost $8.7 billion.
Betting on SpaceX is in many ways a bet on Musk himself. In an unusual arrangement that has drawn criticism from shareholder watchdogs, he holds 82% interest in a special B class of shares, giving him sweeping power to control the company even though his ownership stake is about half that.
“There’s a lot of hype, but I see the faith that investors have in Musk,” said Yordys Coro, an IT support contractor in Miami as he watched his $14,000 investment in SpaceX shoot up to $17,000 in just a few hours. “I’m going to hold on.”
Wall Street bankers that helped take SpaceX public are also enthusiastic about the company — and the big fees they will earn — but not everyone thinks the stock price is justified.
Analysts at research firm Morningstar, which doesn't earn any investment banking fees, wrote that the IPO is “significantly overvalued." Citing SpaceX's unproven technology and massive capital needs, they estimated the company is only worth $780 billion — less than half its IPO value.
SpaceX itself has hinted at the challenges, conceding in regulatory documents that some of its business plans rest on “unproven technologies.” It also indicated that another part of the company, its artificial intelligence business called xAI, has no clear path to profitability and is burning cash to catch up with rivals.
On a livestreamed conference Thursday with the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, one of the investment banks making big money off the IPO, Musk offered few details.
He entertained the crowd with talk of “moon hotels,” a future Martian colony and a network of Earth-orbiting data centers powered by the sun. But when asked about plans for his flagship chatbot offering Grok, he pivoted to talking about his satellites.
Still, Musk has pulled off the seemingly impossible before.
The now-trillionaire — on paper at least — made his initial fortune by creating two companies, Zip2 and PayPal, that netted him about $200 million at sale. He used that money to start SpaceX and invest in Tesla, and defied the odds by creating a space company that figured out how to reuse rockets and a car company that made electric vehicles cool.
Musk has realized vast sums of wealth for himself, much of it in stock he has yet to cash in or grants for shares he’ll only receive if Tesla or SpaceX hit ambitious performance targets.
His recent pay package from Tesla was so large it even drew criticism from the Vatican. At Tesla, he’s worried shareholders by fighting with regulators or dividing his attention between multiple companies and last year by taking a role in the Trump administration.
But a rising stock price has cured all ills: Since it went public in 2010, Tesla has returned 20,000% for shareholders, or more than $1.2 trillion in investor wealth.
SpaceX is the first of three “megacap” companies expected to go public this year, with Anthropic and OpenAI to follow. Nasdaq even revised its rules to allow SpaceX to gain entry into funds tied to its indexes in 15 days, which means investors will end up buying the rocket maker's shares much earlier.
Not all investors are thrilled about SpaceX potentially showing up in their holdings of index funds.
Officials from pension funds for firefighters, teachers and other workers in California and New York sent a letter to SpaceX last month decrying some of the provisions in its IPO, including mandatory arbitration of shareholder claims and how much power Musk will hold over the company.
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AP reporters Stan Choe and Wyatte Grantham-Philips contributed from New York and reporter Matt O'Brien contributed from Providence.
Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX, third from right, celebrates with colleagues during a bell ringing ceremony for the IPO of SpaceX at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, Friday, June 12, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
A large inflatable figure depicting Elon Musk stands in Times Square in New York on Thursday, June 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX speaks during a bell ringing ceremony for the IPO of SpaceX at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, Friday, June 12, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX celebrates with colleagues during a bell ringing ceremony for the IPO of SpaceX at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, Friday, June 12, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
FILE - Elon Musk departs after a welcome ceremony with President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People, Thursday, May 14, 2026, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
