There has been no surprise at the plenary assembly of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) that is being held this week at its headquarters on Añastro Street, in Madrid. The archbishop of Valladolid, Luis Argüello from Palencia (Meneses de Campos, 1953), entered as the man with the most support among the prelates and leaves as the new head of the Spanish bishops with 48 favorable votes out of the 78 possible in the first vote, without need to repeat the scrutiny when having an absolute majority. Yesterday’s initial poll, with a non-binding vote, already predicted that he would be the chosen one.
Argüello, 70 years old, was appointed archbishop of the Valladolid diocese in June 2022 and had previously held the position of general secretary and spokesperson of the EEC for a period of four years, between 2018 and 2022. His first gesture as a new president, together with the new vice president, the cardinal and archbishop of Madrid José Cobo – elected in the second vote with 39 votes –, was to greet the victims of sexual abuse who gathered in front of the organization’s headquarters, in Madrid. Furthermore, they have promised them that they will receive them, in a meeting that for now has no date. In the next four years they will have to face, among others, the challenge of implementing the comprehensive reparation plan for victims of abuse in the Church.
Bishop since 2016, when he was appointed auxiliary of Valladolid, Argüello has spent his entire life in Valladolid and had been the right-hand man of Cardinal Ricardo Blázquez, with whom he has shared the episcopal seat as well as the government of the EEC. He was ordained a priest in 1986 and ten years earlier he had graduated in Law and was a university professor.
Although in the Transition he collaborated with the PSOE – as he himself revealed in an interview in Alfa and Omerga – he is associated with the conservative profiles of the Church, although with a softer tone than that used by prelates such as Jesús Sanz (Oviedo). or Juan Ignacio Munilla (Orihuela-Alicante), who have not spared their criticism of the airs that come from the Vatican. Cobo, who will be his vice president replacing Cardinal Carlos Osoro and has been identified in this process as Pope Francis’ man, gives an apparent image of balance in the EEC, although the aforementioned Sanz has entered the executive commission – in third vote by not having an absolute majority in the first two – and bishops like Mario Iceta (Burgos) who tip the balance towards the conservative side. Francisco César García Magán, auxiliary bishop of Toledo, will continue as secretary general of the EEC until 2027, who succeeded Argüello in that position in 2022.
The president of the EEC was appointed auxiliary bishop of Valladolid on April 14, 2016 by Pope Francis. On June 17, 2022, he was named archbishop of that same diocese. He was ordained a priest on September 27, 1986 for the archdiocese of Valladolid, where he has held, among others, positions such as formator in the diocesan seminary (1986-1997); episcopal vicar of the city and member of the episcopal council, during three stages: (1986-1997, 2003-2009 and 2010-2011).
The new president of the EEC also trained in Valladolid, at the La Salle Brothers school and then at the university, where he obtained a degree in Civil Law. Likewise, he studied ecclesiastical studies at the Augustinian Fathers center in the same city.
In his first intervention, Argüello asked for “unity” and a Church present in public life through the laity. “We have a special responsibility, which is precisely to take care of this exercise of collegiality of the bishops of Spain, their connection with the bishop of Rome, and from him, with the entire universal Church, and also encourage that all the people of God walk together” , he remarked.
Precisely, Omella, in his farewell speech, appealed to “communion” among the prelates. Cobo, in turn, wanted to draw a thread of continuity with the work of his predecessors and pointed out that they are joining “a train in motion.”
The possibility of approving an Amnesty law has caused a disparity of opinions among the bishops and a few months ago the Tarragona Episcopal Conference, which brings together the Catalan dioceses, came out to amend the position expressed by the spokesperson of the EEC, García Magán, contrary to criminal oblivion.
Argüello – like other conservative prelates such as Sanz or Munilla – in November assured that criminal oblivion can “call into question” the “pillars of coexistence”, which in his opinion are freedom, equality, solidarity and legal security. “The amnesty could be valuable if it were reciprocal and those granted amnesty renounced an illegal and unilateral process, if it were the result of an agreement with a qualified majority, if it did not protect violence against people. If not, it threatens the coexistence that it claims to serve,” he stated on another occasion.
In 2021, when he was the spokesperson for the EEC, he had the task of defending the pardons for the leaders of the process. “We are, like the Catalan bishops, for dialogue,” he assured then.
In relation to the controversy that has aroused in recent weeks the Declaration Fiducia supplicans on the pastoral meaning of blessings, from the Vatican, by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, Argüello has pointed out that there is “confusion “, unlike other bishops such as Munilla or Sanz and the conservative episcopate in other countries, who have openly attacked the document that endorses the possibility of blessing couples in an irregular situation in the eyes of the Church and homosexuals.
“The document has two key points of reference. One, that the blessing of God, the love of God is for all people. And another, that the blessings of a ritual nature that in some episcopates were being proposed and prepared, also that document He clearly says no. I believe that the problem has come from contextual issues,” Argüello said in a recent interview with Religión Digital. “It has been accepted that African bishops live in a context and sometimes I think it has not been taken into account that in the West we also live in another context, with legitimate gender studies, gender ideologies… more complicated, pressures from lobbies. even more complicated, which also make their underlines when interpreting one way or another,” he added.
Likewise, he points out that “the document often insists on spontaneous blessings and the blessing of people” and believes that “the interpretation of the word couple in both contexts has generated this confusion.”
He also reveals that he refused to bless a couple who asked him to do it along with a photo, understanding that “they were trying to use the possibility of a blessing to instrumentalize him in that context of ideologies and so on.”
