The call of all the Spanish bishops to the Vatican to address the seminary situation is unusual, because it has few precedents. It is not usual for the Holy See, in this case, through the Dicastery for the Clergy, to call a full episcopal conference, since they usually only visit the Vatican together in the traditional ad limina visits, which take place every five years.
The recent precedents for an extraordinary call have to do with well-known sexual abuse crises that caused media storms in the Church. It was the case of Chile, in 2018, when the 34 Chilean bishops ended up submitting their resignation en masse as a result of the decades-long cover-up scandals of the crimes committed by the priest Fernando Karadima. Also that of Ireland, in 2010, when Pope Benedict XVI summoned all the Irish bishops after it became known about the abuse committed by some 50 priests of the archdiocese of Dublin over three decades on some 400 children.
Decades behind is the special synod of the Dutch Church that was held in 1980 in the Vatican due to the desire of Pope John Paul II to find a solution to the pastoral controversies that had surrounded the Church of the Netherlands.
However, the call to address the issue of the 45 Spanish seminaries is particular. The most normal thing would be for only the members of the Episcopal Commission of Seminaries and Universities of the Spanish Episcopal Conference to have been called, headed by the Archbishop of Urgell, Joan-Enric Vives. According to the theologian Massimo Faggioli, a professor at the University of Villanova (Philadelphia), this case is "particular" because all the others "were well known to public opinion and it was known what was happening". "On the other hand, in the case of Spain regarding the seminars, one can speculate about the problem, but everything is quite secret. It is an anomaly", he points out.
