A row between Church and state over Spain's forthcoming elections came to a head on Thursday night when the Socialist prime minister met the Vatican's envoy in Madrid to insist that bishops stop urging people to vote for the opposition.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was due to tell Monsignor Manuel Monteiro de Castro that the Catholic Church's recent criticism of the Spanish government had gone too far and that bishops should desist from political campaigning in advance of the elections on March 9.
The long dispute over the Church's role in politics escalated last month when a statement released by the Spanish council of bishops implicitly called on voters to back the rightwing People's Party (PP), enraging the Zapatero government and leading to a public row that has become one of the hottest election issues.
Church leaders have angrily opposed the social reforms introduced by the government since 2004, including the relaxing of divorce laws, the legalization of gay marriage, the removal of religious classes from the national school curriculum and the passing of the historical memory law, in which the Socialists attempted to redress the grievances of Franco's victims.
What most angered Zapatero, however, was criticism of the negotiations with ETA. The Church accused him of making concessions to the Basque separatist group. The Church's comments are widely seen as hypocritical since the bishop of San Sebastian, Juan Maria Uriarte, was a mediator during negotiations between ETA and the conservative government of Jose Maria Aznar in the late 1990s.
The council of bishops' new statement warned of the "danger of political and legislative choices that contradict fundamental values" and that "not all political programs are equally compatible with our faith and with the demands of a Christian life." Though it did not directly name the Socialist party, the target was clear. Madrid's envoy to Rome subsequently complained to the Vatican and the government has hinted that it might withdraw state funding of the Church.
The foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, described the statement as coming from a "fundamentalist, neoconservative hierarchy that does not even represent the feelings of most Spanish Catholics."
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