Bishop of Barbastro raises the dispute with the Opus Dei over Torreciudad to the Vatican

The Bishop of Barbastro, Mons. Ángel Pérez Pueyo, has raised with the Vatican the controversy he maintains with the Opus Dei over the ownership of the Torreciudad sanctuary, as announced through a statement published this Wednesday.

In it, it is noted that “the Bishopric of Barbastro-Monzón has placed in the hands of the Holy See the solution to the differences in criteria with the Prelature of Opus Dei regarding the legal, canonical and pastoral regularization of Torreciudad.”

This request for the Vatican authority to intervene was transferred “last week to the Secretariat of State and the Dicastery for the Clergy, it documents the contractual relationship regarding this diocesan enclave since 1962, as well as the twenty meetings held throughout the four recent years between both parties,” they point out from the bishopric.

Finally, the diocese affirms that “it has full confidence in reaching the resolution of this matter which constitutes, since the request for contractual novation by the Prelature in 2020, an opportunity to regularize the status of Torreciudad and erect it, canonically, as a sanctuary ”.

Controversy over Torreciudad

The Sanctuary of Torreciudad was erected in 1875 as a semi-public oratory promoted by Opus Dei, after a member of the Prelature agreed with the Diocese of Barbastro-Monzón on an emphyteutic census contract (with a vocation for perpetuity) of the original hermitage in 1962. .

In December 2018, the canonical foundation “Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Angels of Torreciudad” was erected. Two years later, Opus Dei asked Bishop Pérez to nominate the emphyteutic census contract, which entails a consensual replacement of some part or obligation of the contract with a new one. Among other measures, it is requested that the place be canonically constituted as a diocesan sanctuary.

In December 2022, the Bishopric communicates to the Prelature of Opus Dei that it concludes the contract for the emphyteutic census “proceeding to denounce it as null and void” and gives six months for the image of the Virgin to be returned to the original hermitage and everything is arranged “until the complete reversion to the Diocese of the Hermitage, Hospedería and annexed premises.”

Since then, there has been a tense situation between both institutions that was substantiated in a unique way with the appointment in July 2023 for the first time of a new rector of Torreciudad outside of Opus Dei. The discrepancies even led to legal action by the Bishopric.

In September 2023, the Bishop of Barbastro-Monzón already announced in a letter his willingness to elevate the controversy to higher authorities. In his letter Although it hurts, published in the diocesan bulletin, the Bishop expresses: “We are open to the competent ecclesiastical authority resolving the situation if they are really not satisfied with the arguments presented.”

In 2025 it will be 50 years since the inauguration of the complex, which in recent years has become an important center of pilgrimage and Marian spirituality in Spain.