On November 17, the nine Spanish bishops who make up the executive commission of the Episcopal Conference (CEE) went to the Vatican for their first meeting with Leo XIV, six months after his election, and the pope surprised them by making his priorities clear and going straight to the point: he said that his greatest concern at the moment in Spain “is the ideology of the ultra-right.” as confirmed to EL PAÍS by two sources familiar with what happened at the meeting. During the meeting, the Pontiff alerted the Spanish prelates of the rise of these political groups and how they “seek to win the Catholic vote” and “instrumentalize the Church,” according to the same sources. This message has since marked the line that the Pope wants the Spanish episcopate to follow in the face of the discourse of parties such as Vox and ultraconservative groups against the reception and regularization of immigrants.
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After their meeting with the Pontiff, the bishops returned from Rome with that papal directive to be aware of the intentions of extreme right-wing groups, and also with the mission of resolving as soon as possible the conflict with the Spanish government to compensate the victims of pedophilia, an issue that had been stuck for a year and a half. because of the refusal of the CEE to assume the compensation of hundreds of victims that it does not consider credible. In the background, there was the possibility of a trip by the Pope to Spain in June, which is not yet certain or official until Leo XIV sees the situation clearly, although it is already taken for granted daily in Madrid and Barcelona, cities that he would visit, according to the Episcopal Conference on its website. A visit to the United States also seemed to be closed and two weeks ago it was ruled out in a statement from the Vatican press office.
The effects of the Pope’s orders were immediately apparent. On January 8, the CEE retracted everything it had said up to that point and slammed in an agreement with the government to compensate all victims of pedophilia. Days later, on the 27th of the same month, the bishops supported the plan for the regularization of immigrants approved by the Executive in the Council of Ministers and harshly attacked by Vox. The Church, it should be noted, has been one of the institutions that has put the most pressure in recent years to implement this measure to resolve the situation of more than half a million migrants.
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The president of the bishops, Luis Argüello, opened the meeting by updating the Pontiff on the situation of the Spanish Church. He spoke to him about general issues, such as secularization or demographic problems, and also about cases of pederasty by the clergy. Leo XIV listened in silence and when he took the floor he pointed out the issue that really worried him most and caught the bishops off guard: the rise of the far right. “We have verified that Robert Prevost knows Spain well,” Argüello told reporters on the way out.
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In Spain, the strategy of the far right in recent months is advancing, especially after the approval of the regularization of immigrants. “The entire oligarchy hates the Spanish people,” was one of Vox’s proclamations on social networks when Argüello published a video at the end of last January where he supported the regularization of immigrants. The Spanish Falange of the JONS went a step further and disseminated in X a video created with artificial intelligence with an image of the president of the bishops mutating into a smiling demon in flames. With the accusation that “the Episcopal Conference is not the Church” and that “it is more with the devil than with the poor.”
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The bishops did not shut up and censored the anti-immigration discourse of the ultra party. The secretary general and spokesman of the CEE, César García Magán, defined Vox as “ideological heirs” of Francoism that use the same proclamations that were used decades ago against the Church and “that should never be heard again in the history of Spain”, especially in the mouths of “so-called” Catholics. The archbishop of Tarragona, Joan Planellas, also replied to Abascal that “a xenophobe cannot be a true Christian”.
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The post The Pope Warned the Bishops That Their Greatest Concern in Spain Is the Far Right That Is Trying to “Instrumentalize the Church” appeared first on American Renaissance.
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