(ZENIT News / Madrid, 09.15.2025).- The Marian sanctuary of Torreciudad, nestled in the foothills near Barbastro, Spain, has become the stage of one of the most unusual and tense disputes in the contemporary Catholic Church: a clash between the local bishop and the Opus Dei, with echoes reaching all the way to Pope Francis’s final months of life.
On September 8, Bishop Ángel Pérez Pueyo of Barbastro-Monzón used the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin to deliver a homily that went far beyond pious celebration. From the pulpit of his cathedral, he spoke of “fighting to exhaustion” for the dignity of his people, demanding once again the return of the 11th-century Romanesque statue of Our Lady of Torreciudad to the small medieval hermitage where it was venerated for nearly a millennium. The image currently presides over the vast modern sanctuary built and managed by Opus Dei, which draws some 200,000 pilgrims annually.
Pérez Pueyo invoked not only local devotion but also papal backing. He recounted how Francis, during the Spanish bishops’ ad limina visit in 2021, encouraged him in Argentine idiom: “Ángel, no cedás.” A year before the pontiff’s death, he allegedly repeated the exhortation in St. Peter’s Square: “Ángel, have they brought Our Lady back down yet?” The bishop even cited a 2024 handwritten note from Francis warning him of “mafioso intrigues” around the matter — remarks that have fueled fascination and controversy alike.
The dispute is older than the current players. In 1962, Bishop Jaime Flores entrusted the crumbling hermitage of Torreciudad to Opus Dei, then led by its founder, St. Josemaría Escrivá, a native of Barbastro with personal devotion to the shrine. The prelature pledged to restore the site and ensure devotion to the Virgin. Four years later, diocesan approval allowed the Marian image to be transferred to the new sanctuary that soon rose on the site — a vast modern complex that transformed Torreciudad into a national pilgrimage destination.
But what was once a symbol of Catholic revival in postwar Spain has turned into a contested legacy. The Barbastro diocese now insists that the Virgin belongs to her original home, as other shrines in the region — such as El Pueyo or Guayente — have preserved. Opus Dei, for its part, points to notarized agreements and decades of pastoral investment, noting that it sustains the sanctuary despite annual losses of over €200,000.
The conflict escalated in 2020, when Pérez Pueyo sought greater diocesan control: the right to name the rector, a steep increase in annual contributions from the symbolic €19 to more than €600,000, and, most provocatively, the statue’s return to the hermitage. Negotiations faltered, and in 2023 the bishop unilaterally appointed a diocesan priest as rector — a move the prelature rejected.
The Holy See stepped in last October, appointing Archbishop Alejandro Arellano, dean of the Roman Rota, as papal commissioner. Reports from Rome suggest he may lean toward favoring Opus Dei, which only intensified the bishop’s public defiance. In his recent homily, Pérez Pueyo even hinted he would resign rather than accept a ruling against the diocese, likening his stance to the biblical elder Eleazar who chose martyrdom rather than compromise his integrity.
Meanwhile, speculation abounds. Spanish media reported that a compromise had been drafted earlier this year: Opus Dei would retain control of the sanctuary, now officially recognized as a diocesan shrine, while the bishop would appoint the rector from a list of candidates proposed by the prelature. The Virgin’s statue, under this plan, would visit its original hermitage twice a year. Yet the bishop balked, publishing instead a counterproposal in July: to make Torreciudad an international sanctuary under Vatican authority, run by Opus Dei, but only if the prelature returned both the image and the baptismal font of Barbastro cathedral — the latter gifted decades ago to Escrivá and preserved in Rome.
The inclusion of the baptismal font — shattered during the Spanish Civil War and later restored in Rome — puzzled even seasoned observers, as it had never figured in previous demands.
For now, the stalemate persists. The sanctuary continues its daily rhythm of rosaries, confessions, and pilgrim arrivals, while legal and ecclesiastical arguments unfold in the background. But beneath the surface lies a deeper clash of ecclesial visions: between a diocese invoking memory, local dignity, and Francis’s backing, and a prelature that has poured decades of resources into making Torreciudad a spiritual magnet for Spain and beyond.
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