Wednesday, March 09, 2005
NEW LEADER OF SPANISH BISHOPS' CONFERENCE
is a moderate deal maker as opposed to the outgoing bishop who is described in this article about the passing of the baton as a fundamentalist. This sounds like a move to increase the deChristianizing power of the government. Apparently Rome is not pleased.
SPAIN’S political and social transformation after the Madrid bombings, which unseated a conservative government a year ago, continued yesterday when a moderate bishop replaced a hardliner as the head of the Roman Catholic Church.
Ricardo Blázquez, Bishop of Bilbao, was elected president of the bishops’ conference after Antonio María Rouco Varela, his precessor, failed by one vote to win the two-thirds majority needed for a third term.
Mgr Rouco Varela was the Vatican’s preference and has come into conflict repeatedly with the Socialist Government in the past year, during which it has legalised gay marriage, made divorce simpler and eased rules for stem-cell research.
