A Spanish newspaper has published alleged letters from Pope Francis, suggesting the late pope supported the bishop of Barbastro in a dispute with Opus Dei about the Marian shrine in his diocese.
The publication of the allegedly leaked letters comes just days after Bishop Ángel Pérez Pueyo, SOD, of Barbastro threatened to resign – for a second time – over the dispute.
Opus Dei, which has largely been silent since Francis’ 2024 appointment of an apostolic commissioner for the shrine at Torreciudad, responded to the report in El País with a statement reiterating the legal agreements regarding the disputed shrine, which have been in place between Opus Dei and the diocese since the 1960s.
Two days later, the bishop struck a more conciliatory tone in his homily during a pilgrimage to the old chapel of Our Lady of Torreciudad – the first time the image has returned to the old shrine since the inauguration of the new shrine in 1975.
However, it seems unlikely that the bishop will back down from his criticism of Archbishop Alejandro Arellano, the Vatican-appointed apostolic commissary – and from his threat to resign if the image is not sent back to the old shrine.
What is Bishop Pérez Pueyo hoping to accomplish at this point, and is he likely to succeed?
The bishop’s evolving demands and recent shifts in tone may be complicating an attempted Vatican response to the situation.
And the recently leaked letters add another layer of complication to the already complex situation.
Spanish newspaper El País published the alleged letters from Pope Francis on Sept. 3. The letters were reported to have been written in July 2023 and October 2024.
In one of them, Pope Francis allegedly said that “By naming the Dean of the Rota [Archbishop Arellano as commissioner] I make visible my direct intervention in the activities of Opus Dei there [in the diocese].” Francis also, according to the letters, appeared to note the difficulty of Pérez Pueyo in working with Opus Dei and even suggested moving the bishop to a new diocese to “free [him] of all ‘mafia-like schemes’ going on.”
“So,” Francis reportedly wrote, “clearly, my involvement is absolute.”
El País also cited “Church sources” who claimed that Francis had wished to transfer Pérez Pueyo to the Diocese of Ciudad Real because he “couldn’t handle the pressure of the confrontation.” According to El País, Pérez Pueyo had an audience with Pope Francis in which he told him he wanted to continue in Barbastro, and Francis “understood someone tried to trick him [the pope] and stopped the Ciudad Real appointment in its tracks.”
The leaked letters come a few days after Bishop Pérez Pueyo reiterated his threat to resign rather than accept the Vatican-appointed commissioner’s decision against his desire to transfer the image of Our Lady of Torreciudad from its current shrine to its original chapel.
After Pérez Pueyo’s letter and the leak of Francis’ reported letters, Opus Dei responded with their own statement on Sept. 3, reiterating that the appointment of Arellano as pontifical commissioner came at the request of Pérez Pueyo.
The statement also recalled that the diocese and Opus Dei signed agreements in 1962 and 1966 in which the diocese granted Opus Dei in perpetuity the right of use of the old chapel and the image of Our Lady, and to move the image to the new shrine once it was built.
The diocese does not recognize these agreements, saying neither the original agreements nor certified copies could be found in the diocesan files.
The statement from Opus Dei added that access to the shrine is free, and that 200,000 pilgrims visit it each year.
“The new church allows older adults and people with disabilities to approach Our Lady under considerably better conditions than those offered by the old chapel… Far from having been abandoned, the old chapel was restored and remains on the same grounds, continuing to be open for worship and visits,” the statement adds.
While widely known as a shrine, Torreciudad canonically is a semi-public oratory, namely, a place of worship destined for a specific community, in this case, Opus Dei.
However, when the site began to attract hundreds of thousands of annual visitors from all over the world, many of whom were not connected to Opus Dei, both the diocese and the prelature saw the need to reclassify Torreciudad as a diocesan shrine.
Talks to that effect began in 2020 but broke down in 2023, mainly over two issues: the procedure to appoint the rector of the shrine and monetary compensation for the diocese.
Then, last year, Pérez Pueyo seemed to drop issues and instead pivoted his focus, demanding the return of the image of Our Lady of Torreciudad from the new shrine to the medieval chapel, as well as the inclusion of a historic baptismal font from the diocesan cathedral of Barbastro.
This second request left many observers baffled, as the baptismal font, which was given as a gift to the founder of Opus Dei, was never part of the Torreciudad shrine.
Pérez Pueyo did not mention the baptismal font in his Aug. 31 statement, although he has not publicly rescinded his demand for it either.
Following the leak of the letters, Pérez Pueyo appeared to strike a more conciliatory tone. In his Sept. 5 homily during the pilgrimage Mass, he said that he was thankful “for all the good the Prelature of Opus Dei has accomplished during these years in Torreciudad.”
“I hope that this good work will continue and grow; I hope that Opus Dei will be able to continue carrying out its mission here and that Torreciudad will remain a major center for Marian and family evangelization,” he added.
While the conciliatory tone marked a change in rhetoric, the bishop has not rescinded his previous demand about the image.
Nor did he attempt to walk back his public criticism of Arellano. In his Aug. 31 letter, he said that “over the past few months, I have observed how the plenipotentiary commissioner for the Torreciudad complex has become a sort of mediator between them and the diocese, as if [we] were forced to accept concessions instead of defending our rights.”
Vatican sources told The Pillar that the Vatican-appointed commissioner had actually resolved the matter almost a year ago with an agreement thought to be largely favorable to Opus Dei, but Bishop Pérez Pueyo has so far refused to accept the agreement.
It is unclear, at this point, what Pérez Pueyo is trying to achieve, realistically. He has made it clear in the past that he has no interest in being transferred to a different diocese, as he has rejected that possibility repeatedly. He walked away from his previous demands for monetary compensation and control over the shrine more than a year ago.
The bishop, perhaps, feels betrayed by the Vatican-appointed commissioner. Pérez Pueyo might have viewed the commissariat as a formality, following the supportive tone of Francis’ letters to him, and may see the commissary’s decision to side against him, after Francis’ death, as somehow illegitimate.
It could also simply be that Pérez Pueyo feels like he has gone too far to back down now. While he has a weak legal claim to the image of Our Lady of Torreciudad, publicly threatening to resign could be a way to force an agreement in which the commissary asks Opus Dei to return the image to its original chapel, legal agreements to the contrary notwithstanding.
This scenario would be a win for Pérez Pueyo, but would make the Holy See look weak in the eyes of many — as if it were yielding to the whims of a bishop in one of the smallest dioceses in Spain, despite the reported original decision of an apostolic commissary and legal agreements.
It could also be that Pope Leo ends up granting Pérez Pueyo’s wish and accepts his resignation. This might be good enough for Pérez Pueyo, as he might end up publicly seen in some circles as a ecclesial martyr.
But the leaked letters have put Pope Leo in a difficult position. While Vatican watchers believed Pope Francis was most likely on Pérez Pueyo’s side, it had not been publicly confirmed before the letters were leaked. Had Leo signed off on forcing through the commissary’s deal, and even accepted Pérez Pueyo’s resignation, it would not necessarily have been perceived as a repudiation of Francis.
Now, however, that seems unavoidable.
While Leo has quietly rolled back some of Francis’ measures, he has done so in a way that carefully avoids the impression of a public repudiation of his predecessor. In this case, however, that option seems to have lapsed.
Meanwhile, the leak of the letters has not been well-received, even among influential progressive Catholics in Spain, with some even appearing to suggest the bishop is himself responsible for the leak.
For example, Sister Lucía Caram, OP, an Argentinian-born sister based in Spain, who was close to Pope Francis, said on twitter.com that “If a bishop believes that, because of this issue, he should tender his resignation, perhaps it is also time to calmly ask himself whether the time has come to make way for another pastor.”
In a different post, she called the leak of the letters “an indiscretion and, above all, a betrayal of Francis’ trust. What a paradox: talking so much of fidelity to the Church and forgetting something so essentially Christian and human such as safeguarding the intimacy and the trust of someone who can’t make [the decision] for himself.”
While it is not clear what will happen, the next development in the case could come next weekend.
Archbishop Arellano – the Vatican-appointed pontifical commissary – will celebrate Mass in the Torreciudad shrine on Sept. 12 for its Family Day.
His homily then could give an indication of what the Vatican intends to do next regarding the shrine.