Papal blessing for Torreciudad names Opus Dei rector, not diocesan appointee

Msgr. Alejandro Arellano, the papal commissioner plenipotentiary for Torreciudad, presided over the 34th Marian Family Day on Saturday without any mention of the dispute over the statue of Our Lady of the Angels. The day before, the Diocese of Barbastro-Monzón had issued a 12-point statement claiming the image. The diocesan bishop did not attend.

The liturgical booklet printed for the occasion carries the apostolic blessing granted by Leo XIV for the 50th anniversary of the shrine's founding. The text is addressed to "rector Sac. Ángel Lasheras Presas" and to all the faithful of the Shrine of Our Lady of the Angels of Torreciudad, and is dated at the Vatican on July 30, 2026.

Lasheras is the rector appointed by the personal prelature of Opus Dei. The document makes no reference to José Mairal, the diocesan priest whom the bishop of Barbastro-Monzón named rector in July 2023. The prelature appealed that appointment to the Holy See, and the case remains open.

What was not said from the altar

Arellano's homily contained no mention of the statue, the hermitage or the conflict between the diocese and the prelature. The silence held the day after the diocesan statement and at the shrine's largest gathering of the year.

The commissioner devoted his opening words to the absent bishop. "Although he cannot be with us in person today, I want to send an affectionate remembrance to the bishop of this diocese, Don Ángel Pérez Pueyo," he said before greeting the authorities present.

He then mentioned the prelature's regional vicar in Spain, Ignacio Barrera, and said his presence honored the celebration and strengthened the bonds of ecclesial communion. He went on to greet the two rectors of the shrine together, Lasheras and Mairal, without distinguishing between them or referring to how each had been appointed. The booklet carries one name; the commissioner said both.

In the central section of his homily he placed the shrine within the diocese: "In the heart of this Church of Barbastro-Monzón, Torreciudad stands as a true beacon of hope for families." He spoke in the present tense and did not make that role conditional on any change. The diocese says the image's remaining in the new church has no documentary backing.

A homily focused on the family

Most of the text was given over to the Christian vocation of the family, drawing on the house of Nazareth and the figure of Abraham in the day's reading. Arellano said God does not force the heart but draws it and disposes it to respond freely, and he described the home as a humble workshop of holiness.

A Christian family, he said, is not the one that never gets things wrong but the one that knows where to return when it does. He stressed the role of the sacrament of reconciliation in getting back up, asking forgiveness and granting it. He recalled St. John Chrysostom's exhortation, "make your house a church," and St. Teresa of Calcutta's answer to reporters: if you want to change the world, go home and love your family.

The commissioner described a change of era for the family, marked by loneliness, the difficulty of building an indissoluble love, wounds suffered in silence and the temptation to live as if God were not necessary. In that context he recalled the pope's call for special pastoral care for families, and for helping them discover that they are not merely recipients of the Church's action but protagonists of its mission. He also cited Pope Francis, who called families the hope of the Church and of the world.

He illustrated fidelity in adversity with the image of the violinist Paganini finishing a concert on a single string, and said love rooted in God can turn wounds into a melody of hope. He closed by saying that holiness is not an inheritance reserved to the past but a living call addressed to each person today.

Arellano also recalled the bishops who led the Diocese of Barbastro-Monzón and its martyrs, and St. Josemaría Escrivá, a son of that land, who he said had discovered that God comes to meet people in ordinary life.

A gathering held amid the dispute over the shrine

This year's edition was held under the motto "Encuentro de familias alrededor de la Madre" ("Families gathered around the Mother") and drew more than 4,000 people from across Spain. The program began at midday with prayer and offerings by families and local groups, and included the offering of children to the Virgin and the rosary prayed in procession.

Arellano, dean of the Roman Rota, the Vatican's appeals tribunal, was appointed papal commissioner plenipotentiary and delegate of the Holy See for the Torreciudad complex on October 9, 2024, at the request of the bishop of Barbastro-Monzón. A ruling is still pending.

The statement the diocese released on Friday says it has been given no original document proving that use of the image was ceded, and it asks for the statue's return to the hermitage. The prelature has made public the 1962 emphyteutic lease deed and the 1966 notarial record in which the bishop at the time agreed that the statue be venerated in the new church.