Last updated on January 23rd, 2020 at 09:34 am
VALENCIA, Spain — Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera of Valencia warned his flock, in wake of last November’s elections, that “Marxist communism… has been reborn and is certain to govern Spain.”
The ominous pronouncement was made in a January 11 letter posted to the website of the Archdiocese of Valencia.
Canizares wrote that the coalition government elected in November was, in his estimation, “an attempt to make Spain stop being Spain” and to mimic the Marxist policies employed in certain Latin American countries.
Spain’s new Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez (of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party), took office a few days before Canizares’ letter was published, forming a government coalition with a far-left minority party called “Unidas Podemos.”
In addition to pledging to exclude religion from schools in Spain, Sanchez has also said he will legalize euthanasia, deploy comprehensive sex education programs, and nationalize property that he says has been “wrongly registered” to the Catholic Church.
Canizares was not the only member of the Spanish Bishops Conference to sound the alarm about the new government: Archbishop Jesus Sanz Montes of Oviedo, in a letter on his own Archdiocese’s website, said Spain was entering a “grave moment” in history.
Both Archbishops called on Catholics in Spain to pray for their country.