A five year dispute between the Diocese of Barbastro-Monzón and Opus Dei escalated this week, when the local bishop signaled that he plans to reject a Vatican-mediated settlement over a Spanish shrine, claiming that he would resign if the Vatican decides against the diocesan plans for the shrine.
Bishop Ángel Pérez Pueyo and the Opus Dei personal prelature have been since 2020 locked in disagreement over control over the Torreciudad shrine near Barbastro, Spain.
The bishop has aimed to take control over the appointment of the shrine’s rector and repossess an image of Our Lady of Torreciudad, while Opus Dei leadership has refused to cede control of the site and icon unless the Holy See orders it.
While the dispute seemed to be approaching a conclusion in recent weeks, Bishop Pérez Pueyo threatened in a Sept. 8 homily to resign if the Vatican-appointed commissioner does not decide the issue in his favor.
The bishop said in a cathedral homily Monday that “if I saw myself forced… to accept what I can’t accept, as a pastor I’d repeat the same words of elder Eleazar: that I can’t do it without ‘defiling and disgracing my old age’ in such a way that would be a bad example to our faithful.”
Pérez Pueyo’s words came amid reports that the Vatican’s chosen mediator in the dispute, Archbishop Alejandro Arellano, dean of the Roman Rota, is expected to rule in favor of Opus Dei in the dispute.
Founded in 1084 as a shrine to Our Lady of the Angels, the site has for years been under the control of Opus Dei, attracting 200,000 pilgrims a year.
After questions about its canonical status arose because of its growing popularity, the prelature and the diocese opened in 2020 negotiations to see Torreciudad formally designated as a diocesan shrine, under the spiritual care of Opus Dei.
But talks broke down over the details of practical control of the site.
The conversations became contentious in 2023, after Pérez Pueyo appointed a new rector for the shrine instead of allowing Opus Dei to select a candidate for the role, as it had done since the new shrine was opened in 1975 near the old, medieval shrine.
While Torreciudad is popularly referred to as a shrine, it is not technically a shrine in the canonical sense, by which the local bishop legally designates a site for public pilgrimage.
Instead, the site was designated in the original 1962 agreement between the diocese and Opus Dei as a “semi-public oratory,” canonically intended for the use of only a particular community — Opus Dei. That designation became unworkable as the site grew to attract around 200,000 pilgrims annually, with both the diocese and Opus Dei interested in turning it into a diocesan shrine.
While negotiations between the local diocese and the personal prelature continued, major points of contention emerged over the authority to appoint the shrine’s rector, the level of control the diocese should have over the site itself, and the shrine's expected financial contribution to the diocese.
The bishop said in his homily Monday that if the Vatican sided with Opus Dei on the dispute, it would betray Pope Francis’ intentions.
“Pope Francis himself warned me, in an Oct. 13, 2024 letter, to be careful with going along with ‘mafia schemes’ around this matter,” Pérez Pueyo said.
The bishop did not make public the rest of the contents of the alleged letter.
Pérez Pueyo has recently insisted that the center of the conflict is the image of Our Lady of Torreciudad, which had been for centuries in a small roadside shrine near Barbastro. It was moved by agreement of the diocese with Opus Dei when the new shrine was inaugurated in 1975.
According to sources close to the situation, both the diocese and Opus Dei expected that the shrine would grow to attract pilgrims, which meant that the old, small shrine would become inadequate to accommodate the thousands of Catholic going to venerate the image.
The expectation proved true, as the complex attracts 200,000 pilgrims annually.
While the image did not feature in early discussions about the site’s future, Pérez Pueyo has in recent months framed the icon’s relocation half a century ago as an act of near-robbery, saying in his homily Monday that “for five years we’ve been asking, almost supplicating, that the dignity of our people is respected.”
“Our Lady of the Angels of Torreciudad must be, we believe, venerated in her small and humble home, from which she should have never left after a thousand years of history in the hands of a people that venerates her with enormous devotion. This is why I want to give you certainty that your pastor will always be faithful to his flock... that I serve proudly, and I will do so until the end,” he added.
The bishop said that Pope Francis “took in this petition during the ad limina visit of December 2021, and was interested and made the feelings of our people his own, reflected in a handwritten letter in 2023, with a clear indication to your bishop… ‘Ángel, do not yield,’ so that I could take Our Mother [back] to her original chapel. Later, in a public audience in Saint Peter’s Square on September 18, 2024… he said to me clearly and directly: ‘Ángel, did they bring Our Lady down [to the chapel]?’”
Archbishop Arellano, dean of the Holy See’s highest judicial appellate court, was appointed as extraordinary commissioner in October 2024, a month after Pérez Pueyo’s meeting with the pope.
The bishop added in his homily that the biblical figure of Eleazar “accepted the sacrifice for dignity, for loyalty, for fidelity, and for coherence… Knowing that truth can suffer but not perish, I confess that this claim for our dignity is not easy. It also hasn’t been to raise our voices to defend that our people don't deserve any less.”
The homily came hours after Spanish newspaper El País reported that Pérez Pueyo had lost support in the Vatican after Francis’ death, and the Vatican-appointed commissioner would rule in favor of Opus Dei.
Various Spanish outlets reported in late June that both parties had reached an agreement in which Opus Dei would continue controlling the site, which would be elevated to the canonical status of a diocesan shrine, and that the bishop would appoint the rector from a shortlist presented by Opus Dei.
According to those reports, also as part of the settlement the image of Our Lady of Torreciudad would be taken in procession to the original chapel twice a year.
According to El País, the details were leaked ahead of a meeting in June during which the bishop was expected to sign the agreement, but he refused to do so.
Then, on July 1 the bishop published a letter in which he made a radically different proposal, giving Opus Dei full control the shrine and to elect its own rector, but making it an international shrine under Vatican control, as long as Opus Dei returned the image of Our Lady of Torreciudad and the old baptismal font of the cathedral.
The addition of the baptismal font to the requests left many observers confused. The font is not and has never been part of the Torreciudad shrine, nor it had been included in any of the previous diocesan requests.
The font has been in the central headquarters of Opus Dei in Rome since the Bishop of Barbastro gave it to Saint Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei in 1959, after Escrivá intervened in Rome to avoid the diocese’s disappearance, as it was his home diocese.
Barbastro lost 92% of its clergy during the Spanish Civil War and had a hard time growing again after the war, which has periodically led to conversations about the prospect of merging it with a neighboring diocese.
When Opus Dei received the baptismal font, it was severely damaged, as it had been hammered down during the civil war.
The pieces of the font were shipped to Rome, and Saint Josemaría Escrivá ordered its restoration. The font has been in Rome ever since.
In the July statement, the bishop also resigned his request to any financial remuneration for the diocese from the shrine, although that was one of the main points of contention since the negotiations started in 2020.
The prelature explained on its website that entrance fees to exhibitions at Torreciudad only cover 30% of the shrine’s annual expenses, of more than 1.3 million euros. The rest is obtained through fundraising, carried out by Opus Dei and by shrine supporters in Spain and elsewhere.
Opus Dei’s website claims that negotiations failed in part because the Diocese of Barbastro 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.
Torreciudad, in northern Spain, has grown to become a site of national pilgrimage over the decades, under the care and development of Opus Dei.
But amid a breakdown in talks to reaffirm its canonical status, Barbasto’s bishop opted in 2023 to appoint one of his own priests as rector, triggering a standoff over who has control of the site.
The dispute began with a 1962 agreement between Opus Dei’s founder, Saint Josemaría Escrivá, with then-bishop of Barbastro, Bishop Jaime Flores.
The deal involved transferring “in perpetuity” the administration of a small hermitage and the image of Our Lady of Torreciudad to a civil foundation formed by people close to Opus Dei.
The civil entity connected to Opus Dei 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.
Opus Dei itself would be responsible for the spiritual care of pilgrims to the site.
Escrivá, himself a native of Barbastro, had a personal connection to the hermitage, and to the Marian image contained within it, because his mother had taken him to visit it when he was a child, to thank the Virgin Mary for having cured him from illness.