Spain gets a Jesuit bishopA scourge of leftists, Juan Martinez Camino SJ becomes auxiliary bishop of Madrid.
Sunday, November 18, 2007By Martin Barillas
"Even if he should send us to the Turks", so said St. Ignatius of Loyola and founder of the Company of Jesus with regard to the Jesuits' obedience to the pope. He also imposed a severe demand: a renunciation of ecclesiastical privileges and hierarchies except in mission countries. In Europe, there have been but few exceptions such as St. Robert Bellarmine, a doctor of the Church born in 1542, and the octogenarian Cardinal Carlo María Martini of today. The rule has been broken for the first time in Spain for Juan Antonio Martínez Camino, spokesman of the Bishops' Conference of Spain since 1993. He is to become auxiliary bishop of Madrid. It is thought that the prime mover in the decision is Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco who maintains that Spain - which gave birth to such exceptional churchmen and women as St. Teresa de Avila, Bartolomé de las Casas, St. Francis Xavier, and the hammer of heretics Tomás de Torquemada - is now a mission country due to political extremism and secularism.
The Jesuits in Spain have not welcomed the newest appointment of Martinez
Camino, just as they had gritted their teeth when he assumed the role of
episcopal spokesman - also at the behest of Cardinal Rouco. Among the Spanish
Jesuits, there is some fear that he might even go to work in the Roman Curia
where he could assume a role in education - an area that has been the Jesuits'
domain for centuries.
A native of Asturias, the 54 year-old Martinez Camino is thought of by some as a scourge of Socialists. He has remained somewhat apart from his Jesuit confreres but continues to call himself a Jesuit. From 1993 to 2001 he was the director in Spain for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, once known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
Link to original Spero News article (here)
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