Alberto Núñez Feijóo toured a dozen Holy Week brotherhoods in Seville on Tuesday.
Accompanied by the president of Andalusia, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, who was acting as host, and the PP candidate for mayor of Seville, José Luis Sanz, the PP leader was also seen attending the passage of various brotherhoods on Holy Tuesday, as one more devotee
Just a few days ago, at the end of March, Feijóo himself participated in a rally organized by the PP in Madrid aimed at the Latino community in which an evangelical pastor, Yadira Maestre, asked between hallelujahs for a blessing for Feijóo, Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Jose Luis Martinez Almeida.
The act quickly drew comparisons with Bolsonarismo and Trumpismo, movements that relied on the ultra-conservative vote of millions of evangelicals.
The problem with that event with the evangelicals, and that the leadership of the PP later realized, is that the pastor belongs to an ultra-conservative religious organization that promises to "heal" homosexuality, and that the video of her participation -although they were only four minutes into a nearly three-hour rally—went viral.
Digested the controversy with the days, the leadership of Feijóo recognizes the "mistake" of having had an evangelical televangelical preacher in a party act.
The misstep caused deep anger in the leader, who had not even arrived at the rally when the pastor spoke and did not know who she was, but who assumes responsibility because the nun intervened with the initials of the PP behind her back.
More information
This is how Ayuso's PP campaigns in evangelical churches: "We have important elections in May"
"The problem was not knowing who was speaking at an act of the president and what he had said before," admits a member of the national leadership, who points to the PP in Madrid as responsible for the participation of the televangelist.
In the Puerta del Sol they also admit the mistake because "the televangelists should not go to the rallies" and they assume the paternity of the misstep: "They slipped it into the PP of Madrid."
Regardless of this error, the national leadership of the PP does reaffirm its approach to the evangelical Church and sources from the leadership indicate that it is earning a powerful positive response among the Latino community.
Although the risk, in parallel, is that the Catholic Church, with a historical link with the right and the PP, rise up in arms.
The party's spokesman, Borja Sémper, denied on Monday that the formation had received any complaint from the Episcopal Conference, but also emphasized the non-denominational nature of the State and the PP's respect for "all religions", without prioritizing any.
“We believe in the freedom of individuals and, therefore, also in the fact that we live in a non-denominational State in which there are many religions.
The public powers relate to normality and naturalness,
also those of us who dedicate ourselves to politics, with all confessions and with all religions.
With normality and respect”, stressed Sémper.
Without going so far as to express a public complaint, after the act with the evangelists the Episcopal Conference has exhibited coldness and distance with the PP.
César García Magán, general secretary of the bishops, remarked last week that "the Catholic Church in Spain has no party,"
reports
Julio Núñez.
“There is no party that is hegemony of the Catholic Church nor is the Catholic Church the hegemony of any political party.
Therefore, it is an internal matter of the Popular Party.
They have invited this shepherdess, she has gone and such.
Well, they will know.
It is an internal matter of the Popular Party and of the evangelical brothers.
They will know.
[Neither] the Popular Party nor any other party is the party of the Catholic Church,” Magán stressed, when asked about that rally with the presence of the televangelist at a press conference.
The evangelist rally is not the only issue that has distanced the PP from the Catholic Church in recent months.
Feijóo has received strong criticism from some bishops, such as that of Orihuela-Alicante, José Ignacio Munilla, for his change of position on abortion by accepting the law of terms after the sentence that endorsed it by the Constitutional Court.
"The betrayal of the Popular Party to the cause of life is total and absolute," the priest went on to say.
"You can't go any further: they have assumed all the parameters of the most radical left."
After criticism from the Church and the hardest sectors of the right, Feijóo qualified the turn defending that abortion was a right, "but not a fundamental right", although he maintained his support for the current law on the interruption of pregnancy.
Even more recent is another decision by Feijóo that clashes with the Church, that of opening the door to regulating rental wombs as long as there is no economic consideration.
The general secretary of the bishops, César García Magán, has declared the Episcopal Conference's rejection of this practice, arguing that "motherhood is a gift, it is not a right in the strict sense, it is a gift" and "it is not you can treat pregnant mothers as incubators.”
Again, after the commotion, Feijóo tried to cool the debate and specified that he does not believe that it is the moment to open it.
pro-Catholic statements
Feijóo, however, also has a newspaper archive of pro-Catholic statements - although he rectified them later.
For example, after a Moroccan man murdered a priest in Algeciras in January, he said: “You will not see a Catholic kill in the name of his religion.
Other towns have some citizens who do."
The popular leadership claims to be calm despite the discrepancies with the Catholic Church.
The popular maintain that these do not worry them because the social impact of the bishops is already relative and because, in any case, the ultra-religious electorate "is already in Vox" and is not going to return to the PP.
But, just in case, as in a sort of atonement for sins, the leader of the PP has not wanted to miss Seville's Holy Week these days.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I'm already a subscriber