The Bishop Emeritus of Almeria Adolfo González Montes announced the decision as delegates from the Spanish bishops’ conference visited the central mosque of Madrid, to mark the Day of Human Fraternity on 4 February.
He said the initiative would involve “discerning and promoting fraternity between Christians and Muslims” and the discernment of “objectives we may face together”.
After study by the executive commission of the Spanish bishops’ conference, the plan now awaits final approval from the episcopate’s permanent commission.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Vox, the ultra-right wing political party attacked the Archbishop Francisco Cerro Chaves of Toledo, the Primate of All Spain, for supporting a new law to legalise half a million undocumented migrants.
The archbishop said the Spanish bishops supported the measure as an approach in line with “the Gospel and social teaching of the Church”.
Chaves said it was “fundamental” that migrants should be welcomed and spoke of the human right to “dignity” of those who were already in Spain. He said “integration” was “necessary”, adding that integration needed doing in an “intelligent fashion” although he added that the Church “was not going to go into that”.
Iván Sánchez, a spokesman for Vox in the regional legislature of Castilla-La Mancha in central Spain, said: “What the Church has to do is promote the word of the Lord and stop interfering in political matters.”
Santiago Abascal, the president of Vox – a party which espouses some Catholic doctrine including a ban on abortion – occasionally referred to the late Pope Francis as “citizen Bergoglio”.
The bishops’ conference welcomed the law legalising migrants as a “an act of social justice and recognition of so many migrants who through their work contribute to the development of our country, even at the expense of this keeping them in an irregular situation”.
The Spanish Church joined 900 civil groups requesting the measure from the government via a Popular Legislative Initiative. For such a measure to be accepted in the Cortes, it must have 500,000 signatories.