After more than five decades within the walls of the Marian sanctuary of Torreciudad, the Romanesque image of Our Lady of the Angels, carved in poplar wood in the 11th century, returned this Saturday to the place where it was venerated for more than a thousand years. He did it temporarily, on the occasion of the celebration of the 47th Pilgrimage of the Virgins of Ribagorza and Sobrarbe. A historic act, but insufficient for the bishop of Barbastro-Monzón, Ángel Javier Pérez Pueyo, who has been fighting for five years to ensure that the black virgin does not return to Torreciudad and stays in "her ancient house."
«We are not facing another transfer nor a simple day of celebration. There is something much deeper. A town once again encounters a part of its own history, and a Mother returns to the place where her children learned for centuries to call her Mother. [...] From that memory also comes the request that this particular Church has supported with patience and firmness: that Our Lady of the Angels of Torreciudad remain in her hermitage-sanctuary. “We do not ask for privileges,” the monsignor expressed in a statement issued on the occasion of the event.
The origin of the current claim of Pérez Pueyo dates back to 1956. Saint José María Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei, decided that he would not die without first building a church dedicated to the Virgin. His mother took him to that Virgin when he was only two years old, to obtain a cure for the illness for which the doctors already considered him hopeless. He wanted to thank you for allowing him to survive.
Focused on his purpose, Escrivá traveled from Rome to Barbastro to visit the temple he remembered from his childhood. What he found was a building in ruins and a diocese unable to meet the cost of its repair. Faced with this scenario, he began to negotiate with the person who held the position of bishop at that time, Segundo García de la Sierra, to gain the rights of Torreciudad. Thus, in 1962, they reached an agreement for 300,000 pesetas of the time, to which they would add the payment of an annual fee of another 3,200, about 19 euros at the exchange rate.
It would be a public limited company (Inmobiliaria General Castellana, S. A., today Desarrollo Social, S. A.), which would assume useful ownership of the property with the signing of an emphyteutic contract. That is to say, the agreement left control of the church that was about to be built on a practically permanent basis in the hands of Opus Dei. The carving of the virgin would be located there, with the possibility of her returning to her ancient temple for specific events like this Saturday.
The sanctuary, the work of architect César Ortiz-Echagüe, was completed in 1975. A monumental exposed brick construction located on a cliff that overlooks directly the El Grado reservoir and which houses inside an impressive altarpiece in which the image of Our Lady of the Angels is located. Five decades of existence in which the temple has increased its popularity until it receives 200,000 pilgrims each year and becomes the third most visited tourist destination in Aragon.
The success of Torreciudad scares Bishop Ángel Javier Pérez Pueyo, who has been locked in a negotiation for years to update the 1962 agreement with Opus Dei. A year ago, both parties reached an agreement in principle by which, according to ABC, the amount of the fee that the diocese receives for the transfer of the hermitage and its dependencies would be increased, allowing the bishop to choose the rector from a shortlist of priests presented by the Prelature and even leaving open the possibility of replacing the regime of transfer of the hermitage and the image in the long term.
This agreement was reached thanks to the mediation of the Vatican, which, in October 2024, by order of the late Pope Francis, sent a plenipotentiary pontifical commissariat for the management of Torreciudad. However, the conditions included in it did not convince the bishop.
«Your pastor would never sign this improbable plunder of your dignity. I prefer to leave an example of fidelity to our history and our memory than to betray what one has the duty to guard. For this reason, we have waived any financial compensation. We do not claim the government of the new temple, nor its assets, nor its accounts, nor the entities or companies linked to its management," he explained in the statement published a few days ago.
Ángel Pérez Pueyo's sole objective is to recover his stature and he supports his resistance in a series of letters that, he claims, Bergoglio sent him to show that he was on his side in this conflict.
The first contact between the monsignor and the pontiff occurred in 2021, during the ad limina visit (trip to Rome that bishops must make every five years). There, Pérez Pueyo expresses in the statement, "he welcomed our concern for popular piety and for the ecclesial roots of Torreciudad." A little less than two years later, in June 2023, the prelate of Barbastro-Monzón decided to dismiss the rector of the temple and place a priest he trusted in office, in the first public confrontation between the parties. "Do not give in!" Francisco wrote to openly position himself on the side of the diocese.
Another year later, on September 18, 2024, Pérez Pueyo says that he met Francis again in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican and there, worried, he asked him: "Angel, have they brought down the Virgin yet?" The bishop's negative response did not please the Pontiff, so he decided to intervene in the sanctuary with the appointment of an extraordinary commissioner, the Spanish archbishop Alejandro Arellano, dean of the Tribunal of the Rota and now mediator between the parties. "By appointing the Dean of the Rota I make visible my discreet intervention in the activities of Opus Dei there," Francis wrote in a new letter.
In that same letter, according to information published by El País and confirmed by EL MUNDO through ecclesiastical sources, the Pope offered the bishop a new destination: Ciudad Real. A movement with which he intended to demonstrate that his involvement in this matter was "total" and sought to distance Pérez Pueyo from "all "the mafia intrigues" that are ongoing."
«Those words weigh on my conscience as bishop and pastor of this town of Barbastro-Monzón. Above all, when what is at stake touches the dignity of a small and humble people, who may not have power, but have memory; that may not have influence, but it has history; and whose dignity is not worth less for being small," expresses the prelate regarding this communication.
Upon receiving the transfer proposal, he took time for reflection and requested an audience at the Holy See. Pérez Pueyo traveled to Rome to explain in detail to Bergoglio the details of his war. That was when he, according to the same sources, "discovered that he was being deceived" and decided to suspend the transfer to Castilla-La Mancha.
All in all, the simple location of the carving of Our Lady of the Angels has become a confrontation at the highest level between Opus Dei and the Vatican. After the death of Bergoglio and the appointment of Leo XIV, the Holy See has still not made any move to resolve this matter, so tension remains.
Proof of this is the statement issued by Opus Dei in response to the bishop's statements on the matter. In it, the hierarchical institution details that "in the public deed of September 24, 1962, the useful domain (not the property) of the old hermitage and the image was transferred in perpetuity." In this sense, he adds that "subsequently, the agreement documented on September 8, 1966 established that the Board of Trustees would build and finance the new sanctuary with the express condition that the image would receive worship and veneration there. The same agreement established that the old hermitage and the new temple formed "a single, suitably fenced enclosure."
The documents referred to, according to the prelate, "do not appear in the archives of either the Chapter or the diocese," which is why, until proven otherwise, he affirms that Opus Dei retains the carving illegally. Furthermore, the bishop has proposed to the Vatican that it designate the sanctuary as international and that the Holy See "be the one to audit and approve its accounts, as well as those of the societies and foundations around the complex."
For its part, La Obra indicates that the image "was at no time clandestinely appropriated" and, in addition, they maintain their willingness to dialogue between the parties to reach an agreement and reaffirm "their willingness to collaborate with the pontifical commissioner and to accept what the Holy See orders." Both sides refer to the published statements and have refused to respond to questions from this medium.
While Leo
«There are times when a pastor must ask himself not what is most comfortable for him, but what example he will leave for his people. "I cannot sign, approve or consent to a formula that deprives this town of Barbastro-Monzón of its own Mother, or that turns her into someone strange who makes some visits to her children from someone else's home," he says.
This is the context in which Our Lady of the Angels returned this weekend to the hermitage that welcomed her for a thousand years. That sanctuary that ended up destroyed and that was remodeled by the saint who, thanks to her, was able to live. She did it in the midst of an open war between those who revere her most. Her faithful were able to see her procession from there to her current home, the sanctuary of Torreciudad, from where a regional bishop wants to take her, who constantly repeats to himself: "The truth may suffer, but it does not perish."
