Why Opus Dei and a Spanish bishop are fighting over a Marian shrine

To understand the context of the dispute, it is necessary to go back to 1962.

A public spat between the personal prelature Opus Dei and the Diocese of Barbastro-Monzón, in northern Spain, has just been kicked up a notch, with Bishop Ángel Pérez requesting that Rome make a final decision over who has the right to run the popular pilgrimage site of Our Lady of Torreciudad. 

Credit: Millars via Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0.

Torreciudad in Northern Spain has grown to become a site of national pilgrimage over the decades, under the care and development of Opus Dei. However, amidst a breakdown in talks to reaffirm its canonical status, the local bishop opted to appoint one of his own priests as rector, triggering a standoff over who has control of the site.

To understand the context of the dispute, it is necessary to go back to 1962, when Opus Dei - at the time still headed by its founder, St. Josémaria Escrivá - struck a deal with then-bishop of Barbastro, Jaime Flores. The deal involved transferring the administration of the small hermitage of Torreciudad to Opus Dei “in perpetuity”. 

The prelature agreed to renovate and operate the site, and proceeded to build a large shrine around the original hermitage, and generally spruce up the location, which was in an advanced state of disrepair after years of neglect. 

Escrivá, himself a native of Barbastro, had a personal connection to the hermitage, and to the image of Our Lady contained within it, because his mother had taken him to visit it when he was young, to thank the Virgin Mary for having cured him from illness. 

In 1975, the shrine was inaugurated - kind of. 

While Torreciudad is generally referred to as a shrine, it is not really a shrine - as least not in the canonical sense, in which the local bishop legally designates a site for public pilgrimage by the faithful. 

Instead, the site was designated in the original 1962 agreement as a “semi-public oratory,” canonically intended for the use of only a particular community.

The description of an oratory may have fit Torreciudad at a time when it was mostly intended to serve Opus Dei and its members. But that is no longer the case, as devotion has outgrown the confines of the movement. In 2022, the site attracted around 200,000 pilgrims.

In 2020, Opus Dei approached the diocese and requested a renewal of the agreement for the lease of the site, to adapt it to the 1983 Code of Canon Law, so that Torreciudad could officially be designated a diocesan shrine, while still under the care of Opus Dei. 

The diocesan legal team told Opus Dei that they considered the prelature’s proposed changes unacceptable, reportedly seeking more direct input over the site’s management and a higher annual fee from the Opus Dei, which set off a series of meetings to try and negotiate a compromise. Eventually, as relations soured considerably, the diocese informed Opus Dei’s representatives in 2022 that it considered the 1962 agreement null and void. 

In 2023, Pérez asked Opus Dei to draw up a list of three possible names to be nominated rector of the shrine, of which he would choose one. The prelature refused, saying it had always been able to nominate rectors of the shrine on its own, and there was no canonical reason that it should cede this authority to the bishop. 

In July 2023, in what appears to have been intended as a show of force, Pérez dismissed the Opus Dei rector of the shrine, and nominated his own candidate — an elderly diocesan priest who is not a member of the movement.

But the Opus Dei rector refused to step down, and the administration of the shrine did not allow the bishop’s nominee to work as rector, leaving the situation on the ground unchanged.

Meanwhile, Opus Dei offered a new proposal for changes to the shrine agreement in August 2023, to which the diocese at first did not reply. This proposal, according to Opus Dei, would allow for the bishop to choose the rector from a list of three, as he had intended, but the prelature insisted it should only be applied after the diocese signed the new agreement.

Despite the tension, both sides seem to have made an effort to keep things as civil as possible, and Pérez was invited to preside over the Dec. 8 celebrations for the Feast of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception at Torreciudad. 

At the time, to great applause, he announced that during a visit to Rome he had obtained assurances that Torreciudad could be raised to the status of diocesan shrine. 

According to Opus Dei, the diocese called for a meeting in March 2024, in response to the prelature’s proposal from the previous August. The two sides had a satisfactory discussion, the prelature stated, and Opus Dei presented the diocese with a draft for a new agreement. 

But at a follow-up meeting in June, the diocesan team presented a new version of the draft, which changed several key details, say Opus Dei representatives, who charge that in subsequent meetings, the bishop’s office was inflexible, and refused to compromise on any of their demands, leading to yet another impasse. 

Finally, this month, Pérez announced that he had passed the buck to Rome, for the Secretariat of State and the Dicastery for Clergy to come to a decision. 

Opus Dei has responded, welcoming the move. 

“The Prelature has been working for more than sixty years for the Diocese and for the universal Church in Torreciudad, and it is our wish to continue to do so, in the same spirit of communion and trust that has always existed. At the same time, we have full confidence in the analysis to be made by the Holy See on this matter and we are at its disposal to clarify anything that might be necessary,” said a statement published on Opus Dei’s Spanish website.

What’s ultimately at the root of the dispute between the diocese and Opus Dei?

Neither news reports on the subject nor diocesan statements give any hint of mismanagement which would require the local Church to take over the shrine. 

Some Spanish outlets have suggested that the issue is really about money.

In a lengthy Q&A on its website, Opus Dei said that it receives no money from the diocese, and covers all the costs of running Torreciudad itself. 

The prelature explained that entrance fees to exhibitions at the oratory only cover 30% of the shrine’s annual expenses of over 1.3 million euros. The rest is obtained through fundraising, carried out by Opus Dei members and friends of the shrine all over Spain. This would hardly seem like an attractive proposition for the diocese, which lacks such nationwide reach, and could result in a substantial deficit for the shrine.

The same article from Opus Dei claims that one of the reasons negotiations have failed is because the Diocese of Barbastro has insisted on charging the prelature a higher amount of money as a contribution to the diocese — an amount Opus Dei argues is disproportionate. The prelature does not say exactly how much, but local media have indicated that it is around 600,000 euros a year. 

The movement’s Q&A about Torreciudad includes a detailed description of all the costs of running the shrine, and these do not include any payments to the diocese. Introducing the amount requested now would make running the shrine completely impossible, says Opus Dei. 

InfoVaticana, an influential Catholic website in Spain, has adopted a very critical position and accuses Bishop Pérez of simply wanting to take over what he sees as a very successfully run shrine, especially after it has been conveniently restored and enlarged by Opus Dei. 

In a video posted on YouTube, however, Fr. José Antonio Fortea, a popular writer in Spain, takes a different tone. He believes there is no doubt that Opus Dei is in the right, from a legal and canonical perspective. But he also thinks the bishop is acting in good faith and thinks that as ordinary of the diocese he is in fact the rightful administrator of the shrine. 

As for Pérez, the bishop himself seems to believe that as devotion to Torreciudad has grown beyond the limits of the Opus Dei movement, it should now fall under his direct control, and that its official redefinition as a diocesan shrine would require his immediate oversight, rather than simple delegation of power to Opus Dei, through new statutes.

It is not clear how, or when, the Vatican will respond to Pérez’s request for a decision on the matter. 

It should be noted, however, that even before reaching Rome, this problem had already outgrown the relatively small diocese of Barbastro. 

Opus Dei is a worldwide organization with tens of thousands of members, and what it perceives to be an unjust attack on its rights in Torreciudad has been deeply felt by Catholics around the world.

It may appear that Opus Dei does not carry the same weight in Rome that it did in previous papacies, but it would be wrong to believe that the prelature does not have important friends in the curia, not to mention widespread support in Spain, where it was founded.

As a result, Bishop Pérez may have placed himself in a lose-lose situation. If the Vatican rules in favor of Opus Dei, it will be seen as a personal defeat for him. 

But if the Vatican decides in his favor, he may be seen as a bully who has used connections and friends in high places to wrestle a shrine from the group that saved it from ruin and transformed it into a successful and popular pilgrimage destination. 

Still, a verdict from the Vatican is far from guaranteed.

There is no hint as to when Rome will decide on the issue, or if it will even agree to do so. For now, both sides will continue to wait.