Pope Warns Spanish Bishops: Far-Right Is His Top Concern

Pope Warns Spanish Bishops: Far-Right Is His Top Concern

On November 17, at the Vatican, the nine bishops of the executive commission of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) sat down for the first time with Leo XIV. Six months into his pontificate, he has not yet visited Spain. CEE President Luis Argüello peine the meeting with the expected agenda: secularization, demographic issues, and cases of pedophilia. The Pope listened in silence. When he spoke, he changed the order of business. His greatest concern in Spain, he said, is "the far-right ideology." He added that these groups "seek to win the Catholic vote" and "instrumentalize the Church." Two sources familiar with the meeting confirmed the content to El País.

The scene has its irony. The Spanish hierarchy went to Rome to discuss their own issues and returned with a political directive in hand. "We have confirmed that Robert Prevost knows Spain well," summarized Argüello before the press. Oh, he certainly does.

What the Pope Said Exactly About the Spanish Far-Right

The papal message was surgical. Leo XIV warned of the rise of groups that, in his diagnosis, use believers for their own ends. A prelate translated it without euphemisms: "The Pope sees that the far-right uses believers for their own ends." The implicit targets have names: parties like Vox and ultraconservative groups that, since summer, have been spreading messages against the acceptance and regularization of immigrants.

The repertoire of these attacks, as described in the material, is varied. They accuse the bishops of betraying the faithful by supporting "anti-Christian" policies of the Government, presenting it as a quid pro quo for cases of pedophilia or as a consequence of the aid system the Church receives. They also reproach the episcopate for its alleged silence in the face of the advance of Sarracinism. And there is a proposal that hits directly at the wallet: stopping marking the Church box on the tax return.

This is not a minor detail. Funding via tax allocation is one of the economic pillars of the dioceses, and those moving this board are not doing theology, they are raising funds.

The Three Effects Seen in Two Months

The Pope's orders quickly produced measurable results. On January 8, the CEE retracted everything said so far and abruptly closed an agreement with the Government to compensate all victims of pedophilia, an issue stalled for a year and a half by the bishops' refusal to assume compensation for hundreds of victims they did not consider credible.

On January 27, the second move arrived: the bishops supported the regularization plan for immigrants approved by the Executive in the Council of Ministers and harshly attacked by Vox. The Church, it should be remembered, has been one of the institutions that has pressured the most in recent years to push forward this measure, which affects more than half a million migrants.

And the third is calendar-related: the possibility of a papal visit to Spain in June, with Madrid and Barcelona as stops, which the CEE itself takes for granted on its website but which is not official until Leo XIV sees the situation clearly. The visit to the United States, by contrast, was ruled out in a statement from the Vatican press office two weeks prior.

Why Leo XIV Knows These Groups' Manual

There is an episode that explains the Pontiff's insistence. Before the conclave, when he was only Cardinal Robert Prevost, Spanish ultraconservative digital portals mounted a campaign against him. They used a pedophilia case that occurred in 2022 in the Peruvian diocese of Chiclayo, when the future pope was bishop of the diocese, to accuse him of covering it up.

The maneuver started in Peru trinc the dissolution of the Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana, a ultraconservative group with sect-like traits and business networks, accused of numerous cases of sensual abuse. Francis liquidated it in 2025 with Prevost's help, against strong internal opposition due to the organization's connections. The Pope, therefore, does not speak from hearsay: he has been the target of the same ecosystem that he now points out.

The Reaction: Between Denial and Imaginary Schism

The Episcopal Conference issued a note to deny the information about the audience, as reported by El Debate. The denial coexists poorly with the facts of January, which are what they are. And in the realm of opinion, the spectrum that opens is wide.

Some argue that the Church is campaigning for the left and shooting itself in the foot, with the argument that a left-wing Government will eventually liquidate its assets. Others invert the reasoning: the hierarchy has always gone with established power, and now established power is the current Government. A third, harder current, holds that the ecclesiastical leadership has been infiltrated and that the Second Vatican Council marked the point of no return. And a fourth, minority but explicit, celebrates the destruction of the Church from within.

Amid all that, an uncomfortable fact for the most exalted: the Church has pressured for years to regularize more than half a million migrants, and it has done so before any American Pope gave instructions.

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The pedophilia agreement is signed, the regularization plan has episcopal backing, and the June alucinación remains unconfirmed. There ends what is verifiable. Everything else—the schism, the infiltration, the betrayal—is literature that each writes to his liking.