By Marta Represa at Air Mail: The Poor Clare nuns of the Belorado Monastery in the Spanish region of Burgos have always been known for one thing: their mojito chocolates, sold in gourmet stores across the country and offered in Michelin-starred restaurants such as Pedro Subijana’s Akelarre, in San Sebastián. That changed on May 13
That day, Spain awoke to a statement written by the cloistered community, announcing its formal split from the Holy See, the universal government of the Catholic Church, based in Vatican City.
Although a real-estate dispute with the Vatican was alluded to, the full reason for the Belorado Monastery’s decision wasn’t immediately clear to the press. Subsequent events only proved increasingly puzzling, as the abbess filed a lawsuit against the Archbishop of Burgos, Mario Iceta, and two spokesmen for the nuns moved into the monastery, elbowing their way into the drama.
These two spokesmen, Pablo Rojas Sánchez and his sidekick, José Ceacero, refer to themselves using the royal “we” and move about with pomp, dressed in full religious garb, looking like bishops in a naturalist 19th-century novel. Rojas Sánchez claims close ties to the late dictator Francisco Franco and calls himself a “grandee,” an aristocratic title bestowed on some Spanish nobility. Nobody knew where either of them came from, until Internet sleuths got involved. “I know this guy, he used to mix the best Gin Fizz in town,” a Bilbao native wrote on X, referring to Ceacero.
As it turns out, both men—promptly christened “the fake Bishop and the mixologist priest” by the local press—had been “ordained” by Ricardo Subirón, an excommunicated member of a Christian cult that has been linked to alleged drug trafficking and real-estate scams. (Rojas himself was also excommunicated by the Catholic Church in 2019.) Together, Rojas Sánchez and Ceacero lead something called the Devout Union of Saint Paul Apostle, a “militia” dedicated to the “war on the heretics.” In other words, they are sedevacantists.
When Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council, in 1962, a breath of fresh air ran through most of the Catholic world. The Church was being updated, finding new ways to connect with people in an increasingly secularized world. Mass would not be celebrated in Latin anymore, and interfaith dialogue and religious liberty were encouraged.
But traditionalists didn’t take kindly to the newness. To them, modernism was synonymous with heresy—unity with non-Christians and non-believers “endangered” the faith, and liturgical reform diluted the Mystery (in the Catholic sense of Mystery) and the ritualistic aspect of the religion. In their eyes, all popes since John XXIII have been impostors, and the chair of the true pontiff remains vacant. (They would later adopt the title “sedevacantists,” which comes from the Latin phrase sede vacante, meaning “the chair being vacant.”)
More here.
