From her small convent in the mountains near Barcelona, Sister Teresa Forcades, a Harvard-educated Catalan nun, has emerged as a leading advocate of Spain’s “indignant” protest movement against the excesses of capitalism. In an interview, Forcades denounced the austerity measures implemented by Spain’s conservative government.
The government imposed the cuts to rein in the public deficit.
However, “the cuts go against the needs of the majority and go in favor of the interests of a minority,” Forcades said.
Photo: AFP
Forcades, wearing her nun’s black habit, spoke seated in the leafy garden of the convent at Sant Benet, about 50km north of Barcelona, which she shares with 35 other nuns.
This feminist and radical thinker has lived at the convent near the Montserrat mountain since 1997.
Forcades is a doctor by training. She rose to prominence during the height of the global swine flu outbreak in 2009 when she argued that vaccines against the disease rushed out by pharmaceutical companies had not been properly tested for public use.
Now, together with Arcadi Oliveres, a 67-year-old economist who is one of the ideologues behind Spain’s “indignant” movement, she has launched a political manifesto. And in just two days it has collected 14,000 signatures.
Among her proposals is a unilateral declaration of independence by Catalonia, a region of about 7.5 million people, which has its own language and culture.
She also advocates the nationalization of banks and energy firms, housing rights and tough measures against corruption.
“Why should there be a tax on basic goods and no tax on financial trading?” she asked.
However, while she said she was against the abuses of capitalism, she did not oppose private enterprise.
The goal of the two campaigners is to present a “citizen’s list” of candidates to stand in the next regional elections in Catalonia in northeastern Spain. Those elections are scheduled for 2016 — two years after the region is set to hold an independence referendum.
“We think it is imperative, necessary and possible to change society” by non-violent means, Forcades said.
Born in 1966 in Barcelona, Forcades said her family considered “the Church, like the monarchy, to be an outdated institution.”
However, when she was 15-years-old she read the Bible for the first time and discovered her religious vocation.
“It had an impact on me,” said Forcades, who expresses her strong convictions in a soft voice and a friendly demeanor.
She studied theology in the US and in Barcelona after completing her studies as a doctor.
However, she said the basis of her religious convictions lay in Liberation Theology, a strand of Catholicism that emerged in the 1960s in Latin America which seeks to empower the poor.
Forcades said the first theology book which she read was Jesus Christ Liberator: A Critical Christology for Our Time by Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian Franciscan professor.
The author of three books herself, including one on feminist theology, Forcades criticized the “misogyny” which she sees within the Church.
“I would like it if within the Church, and within society, nobody, neither a man or a woman, has their access to the government or a liturgical position blocked because of their gender,” she said.
An advocate of contraceptives, Forcades argues the Catholic Church needs to “humanize” its position on abortion.
Reforms would likely advance under Pope Francis, who may be more receptive than his predecessors to an “internal democratization” of the Church, she said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not