Spain: Election of the President of the Bishops’ Conference
Archbishop Rouco Varel, of Madrid, and president of the CEE from 1999 to 2005, succeeds the 65-year old Bishop Ricardo Blazquez, of Bilbao. The Archbishop of Madrid, age 71, firmly opposed the reforms against the family undertaken by the government of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, from the time the Socialist took power in March 2004.
Since the arrival of a Socialist government, Spanish bishops declared themselves opposed to the law authorizing same-sex marriages, and the adoption of children by homosexual couples, to the application of “express” divorce procedure, and the establishment of an “education to citizenship.” (See DICI n° 168, 169) On last January 30, they published a note “of moral orientation” for electors concerning Socialist laws.
Cardinal Rouco Varela took part in the great demonstration against same-sex marriage in June 2005, and convoked the meeting for the “defense of Christian family” in Madrid this past December 30.
The election of the new president of the Bishops’ Conference answers “no political criterion,” stated its spokesman, José Antonio Martinez Camino. For his part, the head of the government, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, declared to the Catalan daily La Vanguardia, that in case his party is victorious in the legislative elections on March 9, he would “dot his i’s” with the Catholic Church which had “overstepped her limits” by interfering with political matters. (Source: AFP)
