Bishop of Barbastro says he would resign rather than give up Torreciudad image

Ángel Javier Pérez Pueyo, bishop of Barbastro-Monzón in northeastern Spain, released a five-page statement on Monday, August 31, addressed to the "children of eastern Alto Aragón." In it he warns that he would leave his post if the Holy See approves an arrangement that deprives his diocese of the Romanesque image of Our Lady of the Angels. The statement comes five days before the statue returns to its hermitage for a single day, on September 5, for the 47th Romería de Vírgenes de Ribagorza y Sobrarbe, a pilgrimage festival of Marian images from the two Aragonese districts. Pope Leo XIV has not yet acted on the pontifical commissioner's report on the future of the Torreciudad shrine.

Beyond announcing the pilgrimage festival, the statement warns about the bishop's own tenure in the see and explicitly criticizes the way he says the Holy See's intervention is working.

The bishop writes that his people can be certain that their pastor "would never sign that improbable plundering" of their dignity. In that case, he adds, he would offer his resignation "out of loyalty to our people." It is the second time in less than a year that he has raised the possibility of resigning if Rome's solution does not back his position on where the statue belongs. He did so in different words in his homily during the Barbastro festivities on September 8, 2025.

The claim: only the image

The statement sets out the single demand the diocese says it will not give up. Barbastro-Monzón says it has renounced any financial compensation, the governance of the new church, its property, its accounts and the entities involved in running it. It has asked Leo XIV to establish Torreciudad as an international shrine answering directly to the Holy See, which would also oversee its finances and its pastoral work. The one thing it will not hand over, it says, is the image.

The diocese made that proposal public on July 1, 2025. It is almost identical to what all the parties are seeking, except on one point: that Rome, and not the prelature, take over management of the shrine, including its property. Opus Dei does not accept that.

The passage on the pontifical commissioner

The statement devotes a section to Archbishop Alejandro Arellano Cedillo, titular archbishop of Bisuldino and dean of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, whom Pope Francis appointed plenipotentiary pontifical commissioner for the Torreciudad complex on October 9, 2024.

Pérez Pueyo says the commissioner's mandate "falls on Torreciudad; not on the Diocese of Barbastro-Monzón," and says he has watched that mandate "turn into a kind of mediation" between the prelature and the diocese, as if his people "had to accept concessions instead of defending their rights."

It was the diocese itself that announced, on September 25, 2024, that it was placing the dispute in the hands of the Holy See. Arellano's appointment came two weeks later. At the time, both the prelature and the bishop said they were ready to abide by the commissioner's decision. Arellano heard the parties, wrote his report and delivered it. Leo XIV has yet to evaluate the document.

When the diocese released its proposal in July 2025, canon lawyers said the case is not settled through offers and counteroffers but through an investigation and a ruling backed by the pope. That statement made no mention of the plenipotentiary commissioner's work and did not thank him for it.

Who authorized the move

The statement presents the statue's return to the hermitage as an act of the diocesan Church. The documented sequence is somewhat different.

On August 12 the diocese announced that Pérez Pueyo had "arranged" the move. The following day, this publication reported that authority over the shrine and over the image now rests with the pontifical commissioner, and that without a decision from him the move was unlikely. The Catholic outlet ACI Prensa asked the diocese whether the decision had been agreed with Arellano, and received no reply.

On August 27, Torreciudad issued its own statement: the shrine's officials, acting on the bishop's request, passed the proposal to Arellano, and the commissioner authorized taking the image to the hermitage and keeping it there during the celebration. The statue will not take part in the procession afterward to the new church, and it will return by vehicle.

The diocese announced the move as a decision by the bishop. By the shrine's account it was a request that required the authorization of the pope's delegate, the same figure the statement now criticizes.

What the 1962 deed says

The bishop says the diocese has assembled historical and legal documentation that rules out treating the image's departure as a voluntary surrender, and that no departure that was "authorized, in accordance with law" appears in the archives of either the cathedral chapter or the diocese.

There is a public and known document. On September 24, 1962, the then bishop of Barbastro, Jaime Flores, signed with Inmobiliaria General Castellana S.A., now Desarrollo Social S.A., an emphyteutic lease, intended to be perpetual, covering the hermitage, the guest house and the adjoining buildings. The contract included the transfer of the right to display and keep the image, with an obligation to maintain worship there, and it charged the grantee with conserving and restoring it. The annual fee agreed, 3,200 pesetas, was updated in 2002 to 19.23 euros.

Opus Dei acknowledges that ownership of the hermitage and of the image belongs to the diocese, but it maintains that the agreement is fully valid. The diocese declared the contract null and void in a registered fax on December 2, 2022, demanding the return of the statue and the reversion of the hermitage. The prelature and the company objected, and the conciliation hearing the diocese called for December 20, 2023 lapsed when the other side did not appear. The diocese has not filed the lawsuit it announced.

The manuscripts no one has seen

As in September 2025, the statement rests the diocese's position on private words of Francis: the ad limina visit of December 2021, a handwritten note of July 13, 2023 bearing the words "No cedás" ("Do not give in"), a meeting in St. Peter's Square on September 18, 2024, and a second handwritten note, of October 13, 2024, in which the pope is said to have warned him about "the mafia-like intrigues that are under way."

None of those documents has ever been shown. Since the bishop first cited them, neither he nor the diocese has published a copy, a facsimile or a photograph of the manuscripts, and no outlet covering the case has reported seeing them. Every published reference goes back to Pérez Pueyo's own account: "as he relates," "he says he received," "he says he asked him."

There are also differences between versions. In September 2025 the bishop placed the "No cedás" in a handwritten letter from 2023 without giving a date; Monday's statement dates it July 13, 2023. He said then that the meeting in St. Peter's Square took place seven months before Francis died; some outlets reported it as six.

The second note, the one about "mafia-like intrigues," is dated four days after Francis appointed the pontifical commissioner, a decision that placed the matter in an ordinary canonical procedure. The note gives no explicit addressee for the accusation.

Francis died in April 2025. When the bishop first disclosed the manuscripts, the homily caused surprise and confusion in some quarters of the Spanish Bishops' Conference, which brings together the country's bishops.

Eleazar, and the calendar

The statement closes with a biblical comparison. The bishop says he has thought "so many times" of the elderly Eleazar, the martyr of the Second Book of Maccabees who chose to die rather than pretend. He says he would rather leave an example of fidelity than betray what he has a duty to guard. One sentence appears in bold in the document: "Truth may suffer, but it does not perish."

On September 5 the image will preside over the gathering at the hermitage. Seven days later, on September 12, Arellano will preside over the 34th Marian Family Day at the new church, where 6,000 faithful gathered last year. Leo XIV has yet to rule on the report.

Pérez Pueyo, born in Ejea de los Caballeros on August 18, 1956, turned 70 two weeks ago. Canon 401 requires bishops to submit their resignation at 75.