The threats from the bishop of the Aragonese diocese of Barbastro-Monzón, Ángel Pérez Pueyo, in his confrontation with Opus Dei have stirred the waters of the Spanish Church and also the Vatican, as they place Leo XIV before the dilemma of deciding which side he is on in this conflict inherited from Francis, his predecessor. First, because this bishop has been insisting for a year that he will not sign the Vatican resolution for the control of the Torreciudad sanctuary ― the spiritual heart of the Work for its members ― if it does not consider that the 11th-century image of the Virgin of Los Ángeles, now in the possession of Opus, returns to his diocese. And second, because he has assured that the late Pope Francis wrote him several letters in which he showed his support in the litigation. Now EL PAÍS reveals for the first time two handwritten letters by the Jesuit pontiff in which it is clear that he takes his side against the ultra-conservative organization. “Do not give in!”, Francis wrote to Pérez Pueyo in a letter dated July 13, 2023.
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To understand that letter, one must go back to January 2020, when Opus Dei knocked on the doors of the bishopric to propose a change of status of the sanctuary and update the “legal framework” of the agreements between both institutions for the control of Torreciudad, in force since 1962. It was the year in which the diocese ceded to Opus Dei in perpetuity “the beneficial ownership” of the sanctuary. However, Pérez Pueyo refused to sign anything and, after three years of talks, on July 17, 2023, he announced the dismissal of the rector of Torreciudad and appointed in his place a priest he trusted. This was the first public confrontation between the institution and the bishopric, four days after Francis wrote that letter. That is, it was a move supported by the Pope.
Conversations between the bishop and Opus Dei continued during the following year, until on October 9, 2024, Pope Francis made a sharp turn and intervened in the sanctuary by appointing an extraordinary commissioner, the Spanish archbishop Alejandro Arellano, dean of the Tribunal of the Rota. The gesture was understood as a boost to the bishop of Barbastro. In fact, several days after making that decision, the Argentine pontiff sent a second letter to Pérez Pueyo reaffirming his position: “By appointing the Dean of the Rota, I make my direct intervention in the activities of Opus Dei there visible.” And he also made a confession: “And, by proposing a new destination for you, I seek to free you from all the ‘mafioso intrigues’ that are underway. Thus it is clear that my intervention is total.”
What did Francis mean by the proposal of “a new destination”? Ecclesiastical sources state that, at the same time the Pope intervened in the Torreciudad complex, he appointed Pérez Pueyo as bishop of Ciudad Real because “they had informed him that he could not withstand the pressures of the confrontation.” The prelate, surprised, according to these sources, sensed that a maneuver had been carried out behind his back and decided to contact Francis to tell him that he wanted to remain in charge of the Huesca diocese. “The bishop got an appointment with the Pope, went to Rome, and told him everything,” these sources say.
Francis was outraged because he understood that they had tried to deceive him and halted the appointment in Ciudad Real, which in fact was frozen and finally decided in July, after his death, by Leo XIV. “It is not the first time that the Vatican and Spain have tried to remove Pérez Pueyo from Barbastro and move him to another diocese. They had already tried years before due to another conflict unrelated to Torreciudad,” add the same sources.
This newspaper has analyzed these letters by comparing them with other handwritten ones by the Argentine pontiff. In all of them, besides the handwriting matching, there is the same symbol with which he used to head all his writings and also his well-known farewell: “I pray for you, please do so for me” and “may Jesus bless you and the Holy Virgin take care of you.” Ecclesiastical sources point out that these handwritten letters, like other direct communications from Francis, were scanned by a trusted person and then sent to the recipients by email.
Pope Francis’s letters are not only a demonstration of his direct support for Pérez Pueyo but also proof of his policy to cut power and influence from Opus Dei. First, he placed the entity under the control of the Dicastery for the Clergy, a Vatican body to which it must report its activities, and downgraded the figure of its top leader: “He will not be distinguished” with the rank of bishop and will not be able to wear either the ring or episcopal vestments, Francis decreed in the summer of 2022.
And a year later, he annulled the exclusive personal prelature status that the organization had enjoyed since 1982, which allowed it not to have a defined territorial scope and to be exempt from the authority of any bishop. In short, the Pope relegated Opus to the category of a public clerical association (with the faculty to incorporate clerics into its organization alongside lay personnel) and ordered it to rewrite its statutes.
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But Francis died with the Torreciudad conflict open, without the commissioner putting an end to the matter and resolving, among other issues, one of the main points of the dispute: the possession of the Virgin of Los Ángeles. Opus Dei moved the image to Torreciudad from its original hermitage 60 years ago, after offering to restore it.
The Work details on its website that it has documentary evidence proving that in 1966 the then bishop ceded the statue in perpetuity, and the institution attaches a notarial deed and the emphyteutic lease document. For his part, the bishop of Barbastro stated on Monday in a statement that the documentation with the pact of that “authorized exit” and “according to the law” does not “exist in the archives of either the Chapter or the diocese.” The bishop said in that note that Opus is illegally retaining the statue and warned that if the image is not returned, he will present his resignation to the Vatican.
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The Aragonese bishop emphasized in the statement the change in the commissioner’s position: “I have seen in these months how the plenipotentiary commission over Torreciudad turned into a kind of mediation between them and the diocese, as if this people who awaited justice had to accept renunciations instead of defending their rights.”
Sources from the diocese do not rule out that the bishop will go to court if the issue is not resolved, as the bishopric did years ago with the lawsuit against the diocese of Lleida, its Diocesan Museum, and the Generalitat for the 111 assets of 42 parishes of Barbastro that were in the possession of the Lleida episcopate.
The truth is that, with the arrival of Leo XIV, the order regained ground in the dispute. Ecclesiastical sources indicate that Opus will likely regain control of the sanctuary, although Pérez Pueyo has already stated that the diocese renounces the management of the complex and the appointment of the rector, and only asks for the return of the statue of the Virgin and the baptismal font of the cathedral, which supposedly had also been moved by Opus Dei to its headquarters in Rome.
And one more thing. The bishop has proposed to the Vatican that the sanctuary be designated as international and that it be the Holy See “that audits and approves its accounts, as well as those of the companies and foundations around the complex.”
The question now is to see what position Leo XIV will take in the Torreciudad conflict. His position with Opus Dei follows Francis’s line. On the one hand, the American pontiff has not yet approved the update of its new statutes and, on the other, he showed his support for the writer Gareth Gore ― who accused the organization in a book of manipulation and mistreatment of its members ― by meeting him in a private audience this March and publishing photos of the meeting. The author told the media that the Pontiff congratulated him on his “rigorous work.”
