An end to Holy Week displays in Spain? Never, priest tweets

Mexico City Newsroom, Apr 18, 2022 / 14:55 pm (CNA).

A Spanish priest gave a clear and forceful response to those who believed that the two years of restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic would put an end to the public displays of faith during Holy Week in Spain.

Father Juan Manuel Góngora, a priest of the Diocese of Almería in Spain who has more than 46,000 followers on Twitter, strongly responded to a tweet by Spanish journalist and writer Antonio Papell.

Papell, who in the past became director of Publications at the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development, lamented on Twitter on Good Friday that “whoever may have thought that after two years of hiatus there could have been a decline in religious parades in the street has been wrong.”

Holy Week processions resumed in Spain this year.

“The Spain of witch hunts and superstitions is intact. It’s the anachronistic exoticism that tourists look at like entomologists,” he wrote.

Two hours later, Papell added: “Dark and gloomy Spain of rosaries and processions.”

Góngora responded forcefully: “The ‘religious parades in the streets’’ and the ‘anachronistic exoticism’ in memory of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ, will continue until the end of time.”

“A piece of advice, Antonio, get used to the idea,” said the priest.

Papell’s posts also drew strong criticism from various Twitter users.

Jordi Sabaté, who is almost totally paralyzed due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and who is actively campaigning for the Spanish government to help those who suffer from this disease and not only provide them with the option of euthanasia, replied: “Why do you hate yourself and Christianity? I would like to help you.”

“What makes Spain seem gloomy, dark and anachronistic are your tweets full of resentment. Be of good cheer, Sunday is Easter!” said another Twitter user.