In Spain, the woman priest who defies the Vatican
Christina Moreira, who claims the right of women to the priesthood, was excommunicated by the Vatican for coveting a place reserved for men. She continued her vocation as a priestess, which disturbed even the top of the Church, in a Galician parish.
By Pierre Terraz (A Coruña (Spain), special correspondent)
Christina Moreira at the altar of her informal parish in A Coruña, Spain, April 5, 2026. PIERRE TERRAZ
"This is our low-cost sacristy," Christina Moreira jokes as she opens a locker inside which she retrieves a porcelain chalice and a bottle of Spanish liqueur that will be used as mass wine. This Sunday morning, the woman of religion is busy preparing for the Easter celebration that should soon begin in the heart of this small church in the city center of A Coruña, in northern Spain.
Accustomed to the place, the faithful enter the chapel discreetly nestled on the fourth floor of a residential building by an elevator. Except for this handful of regulars, who have found their way without difficulty and for whom everything seems normal, what is about to happen here is nothing ordinary. The altar is a desk covered with a white tablecloth, the host a loaf of bread bought that morning in a neighborhood bakery, and the priest is a woman.
Ordained in 2015 after an obstacle course, then consecrated bishop in 2025, Christina remembers precisely the day of her call. "I was 14 years old. To prepare for a catechism class, I reread a passage from the Last Supper, Jesus' last supper, surrounded by his apostles. All of a sudden, I was carried to the table next to Christ and I heard him say to me: 'You will do this in memory of me,'" she recalls, still shaken by the event.
Aware that the priesthood was forbidden to women, she decided to open up to her parish priest: a tutelary figure, at the time, for this daughter of Spanish immigrants who had fled the Franco dictatorship (from 1936 to 1975), before landing in the working-class Parisian suburb of Villiers-le-Bel (Val-d'Oise). The latter acknowledges that her vocation seems real, but he orders her never to talk about it again so as not to "hurt" those around her. He encourages her to become a nun, while gradually distancing herself from the young girl. "He wanted to lock me up in a convent, to turn me into a contemplative," says Christina.
A religious procession during the "Semana santa" preceding Easter in the Spanish tradition, in A Coruña, Spain, on April 4, 2026. PIERRE TERRAZ
What follows is a crossing of the desert. One evening, as she puts on her pajamas, young Christina stands naked in front of the cross hanging on the wall in her room and implores: "Lord, if you call me to serve you, why did you give me this body? Why did you make me a woman? Lost, she finally decided to move away from religion and get closer to her roots.
Obsession
After her baccalaureate, she went to Spain for a holiday during which she decreed that her only goal would be "to go out clubbing and meet boys". There she married a man she had met at a party and moved with him to Galicia at the age of 20. For years, she did everything she could to channel her obsession, which never really left her. Even though she gives catechism classes and invests herself in the life of her parish, Christina refuses to come out again for fear of being ostracized by the community. A trying period, with a husband who turns out to be violent towards her. In 2010, an event will once again change Christina's destiny. As she reads the motu proprio, a declaration of the pope that promises excommunication to all those who abuse children within the Church, a shock hits her right in the heart. "I was enjoying myself internally as the lines went by. I kept repeating to myself: "Bravo, bravo, my dear Benedict XVI"! It wasn't too soon, with everything we knew... »
At the end of the text, a short mention warns that any woman ordained by a member of the clergy will be entitled to the same treatment, in reaction to an event that took place in 2002 on the Danube: in a boat, seven women were made priests for the first time by male bishops, outside any official jurisdiction of the Catholic Church. "There, we were put squarely on the same level as pedophiles. I was devastated," she says.
The fear of being removed from an institution that she now considers "rotten from the inside" is gone. Christina gets in touch with the "Danube Seven". At the same time, she spoke about her vocation to a Galician priest, Father Victorino, who was the first to support her. "He listened to me without interrupting me and said, 'If you had been a man, you would be a priest today.'"
Immediately excommunicated
Over the course of several discussions, Christina's mystical revelations are studied by the sisters of the community. Christina's call to be a priest is finally judged to be true. In 2015, she was ordained a priest "in the catacombs" — a phrase from the time of the first persecuted Christians, meaning "secretly" — by female bishop Bridget Mary Meehan in the city of Sarasota, Florida.
When the thing got out, Christina was immediately excommunicated by the Vatican. Back in Galicia, she still managed to join an informal parish founded by a progressive priest named Manuel Espiña Gamallo. She was allowed to celebrate her first Masses, during which she was finally able to give the Eucharist, as in the vision she had had as a little girl. The same chapel where Christina officiates today, this Easter.
Christina Moreira breaks a loaf of bread to give communion, during Easter Mass, in A Coruña, Spain, on April 5, 2026. PIERRE TERRAZ
The Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, which campaigns for the ordination of women within the Catholic Church, now lists between 250 and 300 female vocations in the world. All of them made impossible by canon law. However, the Franco-Spanish priestess assures her: "The Church urgently needs women. Many of the faithful have confessed to me that they would not have confessed on certain subjects if I had been a man, especially on issues of sexual and intra-family violence. Mothers also trust me more than others. During his life, dozens of men came to confession in his parish about acts of assault, rape and violence against their spouses, for fear of being rejected if they spoke about it within the "official" Church.
On October 4, 2023, Christina was even called, despite her excommunication, to participate in the opening Mass of the synod on synodality at the Vatican. This event at the initiative of Pope Francis brought together bishops from all over the world to reflect on how the Church could become more inclusive. On this occasion, the priestess is invited to meet important personalities of the clergy, whose identities she is forbidden to reveal, to share her testimony. A cardinal is said to have confessed to him that he was "completely upset in his vision of dogma" at the end of this meeting.
"Women priests, we are a bit like Rosa Parks"
On the same day, she went to St. Peter's Square, where she decided to put on her alb and stole in public. She was arrested by the police, who took her to the police station without knowing what to blame the harmless fifty-year-old for. An agent eventually finds a law introduced under Mussolini prohibiting citizens from wearing the uniform of a profession that is not theirs, to justify police custody.
Christina retaliates, trying to explain that she is a priest and that she has even just been invited to think about a better integration of women in the Church. Ironically, her sacred clothes were confiscated, and she was released without being given a copy of the declaration she had to sign in exchange. "Women priests are a bit like Rosa Parks: we decided to sit in the wrong place, so we are made to pay for it," she concludes with disappointment."
No comments:
Post a Comment