Columnist leaves Catholic Church to join Orthodox

Columnist leaves Catholic Church and embraces Orthodoxy

Eduardo García Serrano, a columnist and one of the most recognizable bylines in Spanish conservative journalism, has announced that he is leaving the Catholic Church and converting to Orthodoxy. The reason he himself gives is the "betrayal" by the Spanish Bishops' Conference and the Vatican of what he considers the core of the faith. The decision has landed like a stone in a pond that had long been stirred up: the erosion of the Spanish Catholic Church among a good part of its own natural constituency.

This is not an isolated case or a summer tantrum. It is the tip of a discontent that has been simmering quietly for years and now finds a loudspeaker. The question is no longer whether García Serrano is right, but how many think like him and do not say so.

Who is Eduardo García Serrano and why he is leaving

García Serrano is the son of Serrano Suñer, Franco's brother-in-law and foreign minister, and he worked his whole life at a radio station, now defunct, that belonged to his father. In other words, he is no newcomer to public affairs. His biography is that of someone raised at the heart of the establishment of 18 July and who, over the years, has shifted toward increasingly critical positions regarding what he sees as the degeneration of the system of '78.

His argument is simple and has centuries of history behind it. He maintains that the Orthodox are 100% Catholic, that they share dogma and sacraments with Rome, and that the break was not a heresy but a question of power: the papacy wanted to centralize and the Eastern patriarchates did not bow. The Great Schism, those who trinc the matter recall, is dated to the 11th century. A curious detail for laypeople: in Orthodoxy, priests—not monks—may be married.

The Valley of the Fallen and the last straw

There is a specific trigger that many point to: the management of the Valley of the Fallen. The idea circulating is that the complex was never designed as Franco's tomb, and that taking advantage of the pope's illness to close the matter was a calculated move. The exhumation and the fate of the complex have for years been a symbol of Spain's culture war, and for part of the conservative electorate they represent proof that the institutional Church has stopped defending its own ground.

The discontent is not only about the Valley. It is with the Bishops' Conference, accused of acting as a money-grubber and of aligning with whichever political power is in office. The criticism goes beyond religion: it touches on funding, asset management, and complicity with what is perceived as a project to demolish the inherited Spain.

Orthodoxy as a refuge: what the change implies

Moving from the Catholic Church to the Orthodox is not an administrative formality. It means choosing a patriarchate—Greek, Russian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Constantinopolitan—and accepting a decentralized structure where each national church governs its own territory. For someone coming from Roman Catholicism, the appeal is obvious: less Vatican bureaucracy, more tradition, and above all, a framework where authority is not concentrated in a single person.

The discussion about technical details has been intense. It has been clarified that laypeople are not rebaptized, only chrismated, and that public abjuration is reserved for priests who change creed. It has also been recalled that the existence of deaconesses is documented in the Acts of the Apostles and that their restoration is being studied even in Rome. These are nuances that separate the symbolic gesture from canonical reality.

The criticism: 'leaving one to join another'

Not everyone sees the decision as an act of consistency. Part of the analysis holds that religious institutions are 100% rotten and that changing from one to another solves nothing. Another current points out that it is a hot-headed reaction, a legitimate anger at the current Church that should not be confused with a deep conversion. And some read it as a pose: the gesture of someone with free time and enough income to devote himself to these debates.

The most repeated accusation is that of ideological consistency. It is recalled that García Serrano has been labeled a Falangist and that he once criticized leaders he later voted for. Spanish politics is full of such twists, and religion is no exception. For his critics, the church change is less a spiritual search than a positioning in the culture war.

The background: a Spanish Catholic Church in crisis

Beyond the specific case, the episode reflects a real fracture. The Spanish Catholic Church has lost social, financial, and political weight in recent decades, and its hierarchy is perceived as increasingly distant from the base. The Bishops' Conference, with its pronouncements on migration and its asset management, has become a target of criticism from both the left and the hard right.

The paradox is that the discontent does not generate organized alternatives. There is talk of creating national churches, breaking with Rome, recovering properties, but no one takes the step. García Serrano's individual gesture is, for now, just that: individual. And therein lies the key to whether this is an anecdote or the beginning of something bigger.

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It remains to be seen whether the announcement stays a seasonal headline or drags others along. Spanish Orthodoxy is a minority and dispersed, and it lacks the infrastructure to absorb mass conversions. But the discontent is there, and those who leave rarely return. The prediction, with all due reservations: this does not change the balance of forces, but it does add one more sustancia ilegal to the narrative of a Church that can no longer take the loyalty of its own for granted.