All change in Spain

On 11 March Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela of Madrid presided over a state memorial service in Madrid’s Almudena Cathedral on the tenth anniversary of the Madrid train bombing which left 191 dead and almost 2,000 injured. A few hours later he made his final address to the Spanish bishops’ conference, which met to elect his successor as president.

Many Spanish media outlets described it as a sour address, one they claimed matched the tone that had predominated throughout his term of office. In the Catalan language paper El Punt Avui, one commentator observed: "Rouco has been the voice of law, a gruff voice with a cold view of the world and of its people.” His term lasted a total of 12 years interrupted by a three-year spell when Archbishop Ricardo Blázquez Perez of Valladolid defeated him in an election among Spain’s bishops.

At last Tuesday’s memorial Mass the cardinal had appeared to align himself with the conspiracy theories which have bedeviled the police investigations of the Madrid atrocity. The then-ruling conservative Partido Popular initially blamed the separatist group ETA.

However Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, the Justice Minister of the Partido Popular, which is back in power, as well as the Speaker of the Congress, Jesús Posado, had gone out of their way to finally endorse the outcome of the 2007 trial which led to the conviction of the surviving members of an Islamist cell.

But Cardinal Rouco Varela appeared to want to leave the conspiracy door open. "There were people willing to kill, motivated by an unclear desire for power," he said. While this phrase appears vague in itself, in Spanish political discourse it is taken to mean the police and judicial investigation into the bombings did not get to the bottom of the case.

Later, addressing his fellow bishops, the cardinal enunciated problems relating to contemporary Spanish society: the ongoing economic crisis, the low intellectual level in public discourse and its contamination by relativism and emotionalism, the profound crisis in the family and in marriage, the ageing of Spanish society, and new challenges which the right to life has been confronted with in recent years. On the danger of a breakaway from Spain by Catalonia, Rouco Varela warned of the worsening threat of a possible “selfish split” which he has previously said was “morally unacceptable”.

But it seems that Cardinal Pietro Parolín, Pope Francis’ new Secretary of State, is much less concerned about Catalan independence. After the Spanish bishops’ recent ad limina visit to the Vatican, Parolin was quoted as saying “The Holy See has no need to take a stand on this matter. It is a political issue.”

When the vote for the new president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference was taken, Archbishop Blázquez was elected in the first round with an unprecedented 60 votes out of 79. Although much more in line with the style and thinking of Pope Francis than his predecessor Rouco, Blázquez’s previous term as president during the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI was less than stirring, both because of his own diffident manner as well as to a perceived lack of support from the Vatican. It ended in an unprecedented failure to win a second term from his brother bishops.

Whether he can be more successful this time round, with a more sympathetic ear in Rome perhaps, remains to be seen. With the Spanish Church facing declining and ageing congregations, with the economic crisis still far from over and with Catalan and perhaps Basque independence moves possible, the next three years will, if anything, be still more challenging for Blázquez than his previous term.

James Scott is a lay Catholic and a teacher living in the Archdiocese of Tarragona