A newly-installed Basque bishop has banned his diocesan television channel from broadcasting content from an American Catholic media company in order to “favour the communion of the diocese with the successor of Peter”.
Bishop Fernando Prado Ayuso CMF banned his local Church’s channel from carrying programming from the Eternal World Television Network (EWTN), an Alabama-based network perceived as critical of the Pope.
The decree announcing the decision by Bishop Ayuso was dated 19 December 2022, just two days after his consecration as episcopal ordinary of San Sebastián, a diocese in Spain’s Basque country composed of over 600,000 baptised Catholics.
The 53-year-old bishop is a Claretian missionary, a former professor of theology and a widely published author whose 2018 book-length interview with Pope Francis, La fuerza de la vocación, was translated into seventeen languages.
Pope Francis appointed him to be the next Bishop of San Sebastián in October last year.
In the document announcing the prohibition of EWTN programming on Betania TV, the local Church’s television channel, Ayuso declared that “going forward, and until further notice, no content from the EWTN channel will be broadcast on diocesan television”.
EWTN is the world’s largest Catholic media group, broadcast to an estimated 380 million homes across 150 countries. EWTN also owns one America’s largest Catholic newspapers, the National Catholic Register, and an international news agency for Church affairs, the Catholic News Agency.
Founded in 1981 by Mother Angelica, a Franciscan religious sister, EWTN is considered a conservative voice within Catholic media.
Some programmes have been strongly critical of the present Pope, including am EWTN’s flagship commentary show “The World Over”.
The network is believed to have been the target of a statement Pope Francis made in 2021, where, on being questioned how he responded to mistrust within the Church, he singled out a “large Catholic television channel that has no hesitation in continually speaking ill of the Pope”.
This channel, he added, is “doing the work of the devil”.
EWTN defends their programming as intended to present a diversity of opinions, and their CEO, Michael Warsaw, who was named a consultor for the Vatican’s communications office in 2017, has emphasised the channel’s loyalty to the Pope.
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