The newspaper El País publishes this Monday that Leo XIV stated to a group of bishops from the Episcopal Conference (CEE) that his main concern is “the far-right ideology” in Spain. The Pope regrets that they try to instrumentalize the Church and its insidious venom against immigrants. More than twelve hours after this news appeared on the front page, only media outlets, let's call them left-wing, such as Eldiario.es, RTVE, La Sexta and Público are reporting it. On the other hand, headlines that are characterized by being a mouthpiece for certain prelates, generally those with harsher words, look the other way. Some confidential sources note that the source is anonymous, in order to cast doubt on it, but the fact that the meeting took place in November and that in January prominent entities of the CEE blessed the extraordinary regularization proposed by Pedro Sánchez suggests that the meeting effectively ended with homework for those in purple.
For now, I am eager to read what they will do with it in Abc, those who interviewed the president of the CEE, Luis Argüello, and managed to get him to call for early elections. “The way out of this institutional deadlock is to give voice to the citizens”, he declared, breaking the basic contract of the Church with the State, which is not to interfere in strictly political affairs. I also expect to see reactions from the same media outlets that gave a platform to the ultramontane bishop of Oviedo, the one who longed for a new reconquest from Covadonga and who broke the unity of the Church by saying that regularization was a “populist and demagogic” measure. Or from those who celebrated the bishop of Orihuela, who suggested that regularization was done to get more voters for the PSOE, without any basis since we are talking about residence permits, not the right to vote. While waiting to see if they punctually report on this punch of the Pope on the table, I am already preparing popcorn and putting corn in the pan, with the bishop of Asturias' permission.
