Welcome, Archbishop Octavi

The appointment of Octavi Vilà as the new archbishop of Barcelona is magnificent news, considering the official influence that the Spanish Episcopal Conference has over Rome, which has had bishops and cardinals who have gone so far as to state that “the unity of Spain is a fundamental element of the common good of Spanish society” or, even, that “it is a moral good.” Hence its vigilant impulse to ensure that a profile of an ecclesiastical governor arrives at the capital of the rebellious province, with the added miracle, mind you, that coming from the Valencian Country or the Strip, what they spoke was no longer LAPAO but Catalan.

With this appointment, Rome, that is to say, Pope Leo, has once again demonstrated that he has his antennas well tuned, that he listens with intelligence, and that he took advantage of his time in Catalonia last June to grasp the differences with the will to integrate them.

However, the old slogan from the last years of the Franco regime of “We want Catalan bishops” clashes with the reality that the Catalan church has been thinning out so much, due to the lack of vocations and the secularization of the country's life, that the relief in parishes and dioceses is impossible to achieve only with locals. The very biography of the new archbishop of Barcelona explains the difficulty, nowadays, of making commitments at a young age and for life. Vilà became a priest at 53. At Poblet he was immediately made abbot, and from the monastery he went on to be bishop of Girona. As a historian, he will know perfectly well that, as happens in so many other positions in this country, the archbishop of Barcelona is more than a pastor.