Catholicism in Spain

The Catholic Church in Spain is discussed in an article in the Washington Post, due to the visit there by Pope Leo.  Not surprisingly, it is as riven there by internal conflict between conservative and more progressive elements, just as it is in most of the world:

The Catholic Church eschews political labels. But in practice, the church in Spain is led by an across-the-spectrum mix of senior clerics, including conservatives, liberals and others.

As a whole, though, the Catholic Church in Spain is not as outwardly liberal as its counterpart in Germany, for example, where senior clerics have been reprimanded by the Vatican for backing same-sex blessing ceremonies more akin to marriage.

In Spain, several senior positions in recent years have been filled by bishops elevated by Francis and who share many of the late Argentine pope’s priorities. 

In a nation that gave birth to some of the most conservative Catholic movements and religious media outlets in the world — including Opus Dei and the InfoVaticana website — the church’s full-hearted embrace of migrant rights, as well as what critics describe as other liberal causes, has generated unease in some conservative quarters.

Spanish bishops denied a report this year that Leo had described the far right’s “instrumentalization” of the church as the faith’s biggest threat in Spain. Leo did, however, cite concern more broadly over the leveraging of faith for “ideology,” they said.

Madrid-based InfoVaticana, one of the most aggressive and conservative outlets writing about the Catholic Church, has brought a right-wing hue to its criticism, decrying a recent meeting between Sanchez and Leo as “obscene” and calling out the Spanish church’s support for “massive regularization” of migrants.

“We are covering Leo XIV’s pontificate very closely because it could determine whether the Church corrects certain ideological excesses of recent years or deepens them,” InfoVaticana’s editorial board said in written replies to questions from The Post.

The board expressed “nervousness” about Leo’s early pontificate. But it fretted more broadly about what it described as an “ideological” shift to the left by the Spanish church “due to fear of social irrelevance, economic dependence on the State, and cultural adaptation to the dominant consensus.”

 The article also notes this:

A close reading of Leo’s statements on migration shows that he is often more nuanced than Francis.

Leo, for instance, frequently prefaces his defense of migrants by noting that countries have the right to control their borders, calling for investment in impoverished countries to discourage migration. At the same time, he has stressed the Christian philosophy of welcoming the stranger, as well as safeguarding migrant rights. He has described the Trump administration’s crackdown in the United States as “inhuman.” 

I hope the Pope condemns VP Vance's appalling, Musk view endorsing, view of immigration in light of the Nowak murder in England.  It certainly deserves it...