Catholic Church wades into political fray in Spain

MADRID —  Spain’s most prominent Roman Catholic priests have stepped into the center of a bare-knuckle election campaign here, igniting a firestorm by seeming to tell voters how to cast their ballots.

The powerful Spanish Bishops Conference, in a recent widely disseminated “message to the public,” reminded Catholic voters of their duty to defend traditional values and to elect leaders “responsibly” when they go to the polls Sunday. Catholics make up the vast majority in this country.

Without naming a political party, the bishops condemned many of the policies that have been hallmarks of the ruling Socialist Workers Party, such as abortion rights and same-sex marriage. The policies are opposed by the conservative Popular Party.

“Not all [party] programs are equally compatible with the faith and the demands of Christian life,” the bishops admonished.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and other senior officials of the Socialist Workers Party quickly expressed outrage at what they saw as church interference. Next thing you know, complained party Secretary Jose Blanco, priests will be running for office -- and on the Popular Party ticket. Respect the separation of church and state, warned Vice Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega.

The government formally protested to the Vatican, expressing “surprise” and “perplexity” over the statement, which was released several weeks ago as the political season geared up.

The conservative hierarchy of the church has been at odds with the government since the Zapatero administration came to power in elections four years ago and embarked on a broad, aggressive agenda of liberal social reform.

On Tuesday, the bishops conference reaffirmed its firm stance by choosing as its new president one of its more hard-line members, Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, 71, to replace the more moderate Bishop Ricardo Blazquez, 65.

Spain’s political right wing, historically aligned with the church and in power for a decade leading up to 2004, considered itself unjustly displaced in that year’s elections, which followed a devastating terrorist attack. It has fought the Socialist government on nearly every issue.

In addition to recognizing gay marriage and making divorce easier, the government has sought to reduce the influence of the church in public education. This too was condemned by the bishops.

The bishops also seemed to take aim at Zapatero’s decision to engage the Basque separatist group ETA in what proved to be an unsuccessful attempt to secure a peace agreement. It was recently revealed that government-sanctioned contacts continued with ETA representatives even after the group ended a cease-fire by detonating a bomb at Madrid’s airport in December 2006, killing two.

“A society that wants to be free and just cannot recognize, explicitly or implicitly, a terrorist organization as the political representative of any segment of the population,” the bishops said. Nor, they added, could it negotiate with such a group.

Zapatero and his allies cried foul over the church’s pronouncements. They wasted no time pointing out that previous Spanish governments had engaged in talks or other contacts with ETA. Among those was Zapatero’s predecessor, right-wing former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of the Popular Party, who even employed priests as intermediaries in his dealings with ETA.

For church leaders now to tell the electorate not to vote for a party that talks to ETA was hypocritical, the Socialists charged.

As debate flamed over the church’s electoral role, and a few priests distanced themselves from the bishops’ advisory, the Popular Party accused the Socialists of overreacting as a way to scare voters who still remember church support for the long fascist dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco.

“It’s a sterile argument,” columnist Ignacio Camacho noted in the conservative ABC newspaper. The Socialists’ reactions “come from a victimization that is hard to swallow, that tries to create a self-interested polemic.”

Popular Party officials said the Socialists were showing themselves intolerant of opinions that diverge from their own way of thinking and noted that surveys indicated a majority of Spaniards oppose negotiation with ETA.

The Socialists lead the Popular Party by a narrow margin in polls.

The combined forces of the Popular Party and conservative Catholics have managed to fill the streets for huge “pro-family” political rallies, including one in December during which bishops lashed out at the government’s agenda. Catholic organizations have launched a petition drive to overturn laws legalizing abortion and vowed to challenge other liberal reforms.

And, historically, the Popular Party has been especially good at turning out its base on election day.

The Socialists, meanwhile, argue that Spain’s Catholics are more liberal than the rightists acknowledge.

“I think that the great majority of Spanish Catholics are tolerant and are not fundamentalists,” Jesus Caldera, a Cabinet minister who heads the Socialists’ electoral program, said in a recent meeting with Madrid-based foreign correspondents.

“There is a clear alliance [of the Popular Party] with the most ultraconservative sector of the Spanish Catholic Church,” he said. “We tell the Catholic hierarchy that no one is going to attack them, but we are not going to let them impose their creed.”

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Special correspondent Cristina Mateo-Yanguas contributed to this report.