Why Pope Francis has summoned all Spanish bishops to Rome

According to members of the Curia, such an event has not been seen for a long time. So, why has Pope Francis summoned the bishops of Spanish dioceses to Rome November 28? Indeed, many of the main parties concerned are quite perplexed when it comes to answering this question. Such an event had not occurred in Rome since May 2018, when Francis asked all the Catholic bishops of Chile to come and meet him. He then demanded their collective resignation, due to their disastrous management of pedocriminality affairs.

However, this time, the subject of the summons is far from concerning a collective failure, as in the Chilean case. If Francis has asked to see the top Spanish Catholic leaders, it is officially because of a specific and well-identified issue: seminaries. The country currently has 974 seminarians for 45 diocesan seminaries, compared to 1,700 a decade ago. This steep decline makes reform essential -- especially since some seminaries now have only a handful of future priests, less than ten.

A "problematic" report

During this audience, Francis might have summoned the bishops to evolve their model, according to a formula mentioned in front of the clergy and Roman seminarians in October 2022. Five seminarians in a diocese, he had said, "is not a seminary, it's a parish movement."

The Vatican services, through the Dicastery for the Clergy, asked at the beginning of 2023 two Uruguayan prelates, Msgr. Milton Luis Troccoli and Bishop Arturo Eduardo Fajardo of Salto, to conduct an investigation throughout the country. In each Spanish seminary, they systematically met three groups: the superiors, the faculty, and the seminarians. It is this report, which arrived in Rome and was supplemented by information held by the office in charge of seminaries, that would have decided the pope to summon the bishops, according to several Vatican sources. A "problematic" situation, according to Vatican sources quoted by the Spanish Catholic weekly Vida Nueva in the end of October.

Sensitive questions

The meeting in Rome thus aims primarily to confront the bishops with concrete questions and to push them to make decisions. All these questions were summarized by a good connoisseur, in Rome, of Spanish Catholicism: "Should we pool seminaries between dioceses? Under what conditions can a bishop accept to see his seminarians trained far from home? What about the future priests' connection to their region? Who will choose the rectors and the professors?" The questions may seem internal, but are actually highly sensitive. Especially since, in addition to the 45 seminaries, about ten are run by the Neocatechumenal Way movement, founded in 1964, which places a particular emphasis on Christian initiation and baptism and was once under the surveillance of Rome due to its liturgical practices.

But, as explained in Rome, another reason is among the hypotheses advanced to explain the summoning of the Spanish bishops: the pope's desire to encourage the opening of a Church considered too closed in on itself. The pope is considered to be worried about the nostalgia for the past nurtured by some young priests. He is also said to be concerned about the prohibition, in several seminaries, of certain magazines, like Vida Nueva, considered too left-wing by part of the clergy.

From one archbishop of Madrid to another

In recent years, however, Francis has appointed several bishops close to him. This is the case, recently, of the young Archbishop of Madrid. At only 57, Archbishop Jose Cobo Cano was brought to the head of the Catholic Church in the Spanish capital, before the pope announced his intention, less than three weeks later, to make him a cardinal.

Formerly responsible within the Spanish Episcopal sub-commission for migration and human mobility, the new Archbishop of Madrid is perfectly in line with the pope. He also blocked, in October, the arrival in Madrid of Bishop Georg Gänswein. The former secretary of Benedict XVI had been invited by Cardinal Antonio Rouco Varela, Archbishop of Madrid between 1994 and 2014, considered a major conservative figure in Spain and a declared opponent, in the early 2000s, of the socialist government. "In essence, Francis wants to move the Spanish Church from Rouco Varela to Cobo Cano," summarizes a Spanish source in Rome.