Three priests from a working class suburb of Madrid risk being defrocked for refusing to abandon their work with drug addicts, immigrants and criminals.

Spain’s powerful Roman Catholic Church has ordered them to close their parish in the gritty neighbourhood of Vallecas. “We are staying here until they throw us out,” said Father Enrique de Castro — known in Spain as “the red priest” for his Leftist leanings.

Along with his two collegues, Fathers Javier Baeza and Pepe DÍaz, Father de Castro has been threatened with “serious punishment” by the Church for his defiance. He says that he will simply move sites if he is denied entry to his church. “The parish is not the building, it’s the people,” he said.

Antonio MarÍa Rouco, the Archbishop of Madrid, ordered the priests this week to hand the church over to a Catholic charity and forbade them from holding Easter Mass. The order followed a call by Pope Benedict XVI for bishops to join an “ideological battle” to rescue the Catholic faith from unorthodoxy.

According to the archbishop, known for his staunch conservatism, the parish “does not conform to Church doctine” and must close. Many in the neighbourhood, however, have rallied round the priests, saying that the Church has lost touch with the poor. In keeping with its unorthodox methods the parish was yesterday allowing graffiti artists from all over Madrid to paint its walls with slogans urging resistance. Many parishioners say that they will refuse to go elsewhere. Some of those housed by the church say that they would have to live on the streets.

“They can’t shut us down,” said Youssef, 24, a Moroccan immigrant, who has been coming to the parish since he arrived in Spain seven years ago. “Where would we go?”

The Vallecas priests have also drawn the ire of Spain’s bishops with their unorthodox teachings, which draw on Latin America’s “liberation theology” and emphasise the Church’s role as a champion of the poor.

The parish is certainly unconventional. Christians and nonChristians mill around, smoking and chatting about their latest social projects. The parish offers free legal counselling for people in trouble with the law as well as advice on jobs, housing and drug counselling. “What we have here is unique,” said Carmen DÍaz Bermejo, who organises a group called Mothers Against Drugs at the parish. “The damage they would do by closing it is incalculable.”

A mural of Jesus painted on the church wall bears the slogan “Free the prisoners!” — a reference to the parishioners who have previously been in jail. The priests perform Mass in street clothes and hand out Spanish doughnuts called rosquillas during communion. “We’ve tried to adapt our teaching to people’s real circumstances,” said Father de Castro.

Church officials have not been impressed. “We can’t just do and say whatever we want in Mass,” said JoaquÍn MartÍn, of Madrid’s archdiocese.

Troublesome priests

— Pope John Paul II sidelined Latin American priests in the 1970s and 1980s who rejected the region’s military rulers and supported left-wing rebel groups instead

— Father Raymond Gravel, a Canadian Catholic priest, has long opposed Vatican views on homosexuality and abortion

— Monks at the Esphigmenou monastery in northern Greece, above, took up arms against their Church last year to prevent their own eviction. They used crowbars and sledgehammers to fight other monks loyal to the Orthodox Patriarch

— The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem has been split between rival Christian groups since 1852. In 2002 an Egyptian sat in Ethiopian-controlled shade, prompting violence that put 11 in hospital

Source: CBC, Times Archives, Catholic News

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