It was completely exceptional for an entire episcopal conference to attend the Vatican's call for a meeting other than the traditional ad limina visits every five years. There are almost no precedents, the latest, a call to order to all the Chilean bishops for a major scandal of cover-up of sexual abuse in the country. For this reason, Pope Francis' call to all active Spanish bishops, around eighty prelates, on Tuesday in the Synod hall of the Holy See had generated many concerns. The Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) breathed a sigh of relief after more than two hours of speaking with Francis, in a frank conversation in which the issue of sexual abuse was not addressed. "It has been a cordial dialogue, not a pulling of ears", wanted to emphasize the president of the CEE, the cardinal archbishop of Barcelona, Joan Josep Omella.
The topic of the day was the future of Spanish seminaries, afflicted by the lack of vocations in an increasingly secularized Europe. It was already strange that the Vatican decided at the beginning of the year to send two Uruguayan bishops to write a report on the 86 Spanish seminaries, 55 of which have training houses for future priests. But the coincidence in time with the investigations into pedophilia in the Spanish Church, just after the recent publication of the Ombudsman's report - which calculated that around 1.13% of Spanish adults have suffered abuse in the religious sphere – and shortly before the investigation commissioned by the EEC into the Cremades office was made public
"The Pope has said that he could have come to Spain and not have us come to us. But for him it is a complication, because clearly, it would be a State visit. This has meant a relaxation, because there was no longer this danger that some said that they had to stretch our ears. It was not to condemn anyone, but to talk", Omella insisted, stressing - he even joked that he promised it "for Jesuset" - that they only talked about seminars, not about the Spanish political situation. "The balloon that said we should be reprimanded for something very serious that had happened in Spain has deflated", he concluded in a press conference with correspondents in Rome.
The big question is what happens in Spanish seminaries that does not happen in other European countries, because no other episcopal conference has been called, at the moment, to the Vatican for this issue. According to the EEC, the call could respond to the fact that the Spanish is the first episcopal conference to adapt the directives on seminaries, the so-called Ratio Fundamentalis, in 2016, and therefore, they wanted to be informed about its implementation. They also believe that perhaps from now on the Dicastery for the Clergy will call other episcopal conferences for the same reason. It was also very strange that the meeting began with a prayer by Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, in charge of the most important spiritual retreats in the Vatican.
During the first quarter of the year, the two Uruguayan bishops, the one of Maldonado-Punta del Este-Minas, Milton Luis Tróccoli, and the one of Salto, Arturo Eduardo Fajardo, inspected one by one all the 86 seminaries distributed in several " formation houses”, of which 40 are the classics, which host their own seminarians, and then the prefect for the Clergy, the South Korean Lazzaro You Heung-Sik, informed them. A total of 29 formation houses are assigned to a diocese and 15 are redemptive, neocatechumenal seminaries, and yesterday the Vatican wanted to determine that they must be governed by the same criteria as diocesan ones.
But the EEC assures that there is no other type of problem than that which also affects the rest of the European episcopal conferences, that is to say, the lack of vocations, and therefore, there is a need to bring seminarians together in more centers big. "When I told the bishops that it was to exchange about the report, they were already calm, and that's how it happened. We come from a complex reality, for example in Pamplona there is a seminary with capacity for 1,000 seminarians that has gone down to fifteen. It is necessary to adapt to the new reality that we are living in an era that is being born", explained the Cardinal Archbishop of Barcelona.
"We came delighted and we're leaving happy", concluded Omella, who also wanted to reassure us about the Pope's health - his participation was dangerous due to a mild flu -: "We were told he had a cold and has not coughed not once".
