“Now I will need some time to assimilate this new situation and let you help me to place myself where I always have, but in a different way”. José Cobo, the new archbishop of Madrid, has barely been able to put on the suit of maximum authority of the Catholic Church in the archdiocese that covers the capital, the most decisive and influential in Spain. Since his appointment was made public, on June 12, he has entered into a maelstrom about the expectations and fears that this tiny, short bishop has generated and whose Andalusian accent escapes him every time he picks up the phone to talk to his parents. , immigrants on the outskirts of Madrid, where he arrived at the age of seven.
A fear that, in reality, is of Pope Francis and of what he has seen in Cobo. So much so, that His Holiness personally made the decision that it was he and not another candidate who would assume command in a see in which Cardinal Rouco still continues to command a lot, to the point of having short-circuited the nine years of the now outgoing archbishop, the Cardinal Carlos Osoro.
That periphery —a concept so pleasing to Pope Francis— has shaped Cobo (Sabiote, Jaén, 1965) inside and out. It is a physical and ecclesiological place to which he will return to establish himself again, but now from the epicenter of the power of a Church with almost 500 temples, more than 2,000 priests and thousands of religious men and women. Promoter of the slum priests of the shantytowns of Buenos Aires, Pope Bergoglio discovered similar qualities in Cobo when he, accompanying Osoro in his capacity as auxiliary bishop, went to render an account to him personally, with the folder under his arm, of the scandal caused. for the Fundaciones case, a real estate network that brought the Madrid Church to the front pages of today for evicting families and selling the apartments it managed through a board of trustees.
It is not the case of Cobo. Graduated in Law from the Complutense University of Madrid before entering the Vistillas Seminary, those close to him underline his management and organizational skills. And those skills allowed him to frame in its rightful place the origin of an economic scandal that has been about to put Cardinal Osoro on the bench.
Like those priests to whom Bergoglio gave carte blanche in the Argentine peripheries, Francisco saw (and was also told) the taste for the social aspect of that auxiliary bishop, an issue that has earned him a label, that of progressive, in the that he does not feel comfortable, above all because it is mercilessly thrown in his face as a way of confronting him within the Church with those (and there are not a few) who feel the opposite. “José is a calm man with common sense. Those who know him know that he is not a revolutionary. He always acts with discretion, serenity and good work”, they point out from their closest environment. But its “social” aspect is undeniable, in contrast to that of other pastors where the “legal” prevails, the canonical, as in many priests, nostalgic for a national-Catholicism who believe it is necessary to make the Church green again and refractory to a more open to the world like the one championed by Francisco, who is accused of having desacralized the institution.
A priest against the CIE
One of Cobo's first assignments after his priestly ordination was to be vice-consiliary of the Brotherhood of Labor, together with the Hoac, the closest thing that remains to the Church of the union and worker spirit that was born in the shadow of the parishes in the 50's and 60's. He combined that task with that of a priest in several parishes, including Aluche, a Madrid neighborhood where hunger lined up to wait for some bags of food with which to navigate successive crises, recessions and pandemics.. Cobo helped resist those moments, shared sleeplessness of drug addicts, hopelessness of prostitutes and fear of those without papers, and in that neighborhood he went to request the dismantling of the Center for the Internment of Foreigners (CIE), denouncing the criminalization of immigrants and warning of the discourse of the hatred that comes with it, now as president of the Migration Department of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE).
As an auxiliary bishop —appointed at the end of 2017— he was the first to participate two years later in a public meeting with victims of sexual abuse, when the vast majority of the Spanish Episcopate continued to side with this drama.. He himself recognized a few months ago in an academic conference on this matter, organized by the Comillas Pontifical University, that in the EEC, “after a period of dilettantism”, “several steps have been taken, but with a very diverse acceptance”. As a subway user, he knows what it feels like to be called a pedophile for being dressed as a clergyman, but he also knows, because he has accompanied them —he even confirmed one of them recently—, the pain that comes from the victims when someone listen, all heartbreaking experiences that allow him to warn of the danger of “ecclesiopathy”, where “the Church becomes the center of attention and only deals with saving its skin, it closes itself and only tries to defend itself”.
None of this earns him points with many bishops (although they appreciate his training and conciliatory character) and turns him into a kind of foreign body, even though what he says, does and preaches is in tune with what he says, does and preaches. pope francis. And hence the fear in a Spanish Episcopate that has not quite digested this pontiff and the campaign that Cobo and Osoro have had to endure when the rumors about his appointment to jump from simple auxiliary to archbishop of Madrid began to take shape.. A position that, by itself, gives the right to be a member of the Executive Commission of the EEC. In fact, the last few weeks have been very intense, after the relations between the two were intoxicated through ultra and traditionalist blogs, even going so far as to accuse Cobo (in a very un-Christian way, by the way) of intriguing in the Vatican. against the cardinal (with whom they were merciless with questions about his health) and forced the direct involvement of the Pope, accentuating the mistrust among a sector of the Madrid clergy.
“Cobo is going to find a problem not only with the priests. The stage of Cardinal Rouco ended with disappointment among the priests. Osoro generated expectations that in the end have been deflated. Now, what there is is a pastoral discouragement and different sensibilities. Those who know Cobo know that he builds trust. But there is a sector that does not know him, it is polarized and creates fronts, although this polarization is not against Cobo, it is against the Pope,” say those close to the new archbishop.
It is once again the Madrid of they will not pass, but the other way around, where priests and some movements that support them are digging trenches in parishes to resist Bergoglio's heretical pontificate, where initiatives that go along the lines of “culture” are boycotted. of the meeting” sponsored by this Pope, for example, with the LGTBI collective, where some priests act as thugs in the courtyard of social networks against theologians who embrace Francis' road map, against women who claim their place in the Church or against priests who accompany homosexual groups, who are intimidated by the silence of a large part of the bishops, some of them also fearful of this new digital inquisition.
“Rouquismo is not dismantled yet in Madrid or in the Church in Spain. From his attic, the Galician cardinal has continued to pull his strings, although his influence has diminished in Rome, as evidenced by the appointment of Cobo. But it still has a lot of influence among a sector of the clergy and the ecclesiastical movements in the Madrid Church,” the sources add..
After the inauguration ceremony, on July 8 in the Almudena Cathedral, José Cobo will go to officiate his first mass as Archbishop of Madrid in the smallest town in the archdiocese, Aoslos, a rural parish with 76 registered people.. The second will be in the south of Madrid, in the clustered periphery where he grew up. Places where it will begin to be located “where always, but in a different way”, the first bars of a revolution, but calm, of who is called (by the Pope) to outline the kinder face of a Church in Spain still in a bad mood.