Planellas, Archbishop of Público: manual on how to say what the world wants to hear
The interview with Joan Planellas in Público is not an innocent journalistic conversation, but rather a kind of loyalty test to the new salon Catholicism. And the Archbishop of Tarragona passes it with flying colors. The headline chosen by the newspaper —«Praying the rosary at the door of an abortion clinic is to ideologize and banalize prayer»— perfectly encapsulates everything that follows: a decaffeinated faith, docile to the dominant discourse, obsessed with not bothering the world and very calm, on the other hand, when it comes to correcting Catholics who still dare to believe that the Gospel is something more than a sentimental alibi.
From the first line, the interview is framed very clearly: this is not about confronting the world with the truth of Christ, but about demonstrating that the Church is willing to adapt almost without conditions. The journalist asks what progressivism demands be asked; Planellas responds as progressivism expects a «modern», «dialogue-oriented» bishop to respond, and above all, harmless.
The episode of the famous phrase «a xenophobe cannot be a true Christian», launched against Vox in reference to Jumilla and Torre Pacheco, is paradigmatic. Specific laws are not discussed, nor integration models, nor real data on crime, Islamization, or the overflow of services. Everything is reduced to a simplistic moral judgment: if you question uncontrolled mass immigration, you are a bad person. Planellas resorts to the Old Testament as if it were an NGO slogan —«Do not forget or despise emigrants, for you too were an emigrant in the land of Egypt»— but omits any reference to the right of peoples to defend their identity, or to the duty of rulers to protect the common good of their own. The God who asks to welcome the stranger also punishes peoples when they abandon His law; that part, curiously, does not appear in the interview.
Something very similar happens when the issue of sexual abuses is addressed. On the case of Rafael Zornoza, Planellas adopts the already classic pose of so many bishops: a contrite tone, grave words, much reference to the «procedure» and, in the end, no concrete assumption of responsibility. He speaks of presumption of innocence, of the Rota of Madrid, of prior investigations, of dicasteries and procedures that seem designed so that it is never really known who decided what. He assures that the Church «has learned or is learning» with the issue of abuses, as if we had not had decades of chained scandals, devastating reports, and systematically ignored victims.
The example he offers about a priest removed serves as an edifying scene: he who listens to the victim, he who lifts the statute of limitations, he who sends the case to Rome, he who, three years later, receives emotional thanks. All without names, without verifiable data, without elements that can be checked. The moral is clear: the system works, the bishops suffer a lot, the victims end up grateful. What is never questioned is precisely the episcopal system that allowed, for decades, silence, transfers, pressures, and half-truths. When Planellas confesses that he is not in favor of holding trials in the diocese because «it commits you a lot», he is unwittingly saying the essential: he does not want to be splashed by clear decisions; he prefers everything to dissolve in a distant and impersonal instance. Less personal responsibility, less risk, less cross.
But the most indecent moment of the interview comes with the frontal attack on the faithful who pray the rosary in front of abortion clinics. According to Planellas, praying the rosary at the door of an abortion clinic «ideologizes» and «banalizes» prayer. It is difficult to condense so much injustice in so few words. In the face of a place where every day the lives of innocent human beings are eliminated, the archbishop’s concern is not to denounce the crime, nor the business, nor the structure of sin that sustains the abortion industry. His problem is the Catholics who dare to get on their knees in the street and pray.
There is not a single phrase that calls abortion by its name: a voluntary homicide of an innocent. The expression «grave sin», nor «abominable crime», nor a single clear condemnation of the system that has made abortion a right does not appear. Instead, there is condescension toward the famous «easy solution» offered to the woman, presented almost exclusively from the psychological point of view: it can bring consequences, «sometimes», for the mother. The murdered child is not even mentioned. The offense to God, either. The banalization of life, much less. Banalizing prayer is praying the rosary in the street; banalizing the murder of an unborn seems perfectly compatible with an archbishopric of Tarragona.
And, of course, that «annoying religiosity» of the rosaries in front of abortion clinics is contrasted with the carefully packaged projects of the diocese: Llar Natalis, Raquel project, Ángel project… Initiatives that may have positive elements, but that here are used as an alibi to delegitimize those who fight abortion where it hurts the most: at the door of the centers where it is carried out. The diocese accompanies, listens, offers resources, all within a reasonable, moderate, and socially acceptable framework. The others pray and cause scandal, and that, apparently, cannot be tolerated.
When speaking of euthanasia, the pattern repeats. Planellas introduces a confusing terminological distinction between «palliative sedation» and «therapeutic sedation», plays with medical language, speaks of accompanying, of not artificially prolonging life, of pain therapies… but the essential is missing again: a very clear condemnation of euthanasia as direct homicide. So much concern for nuance, so much rhetoric about the «more complex path» chosen by Christianity, and not a line in which it is said without beating around the bush that it is not morally licit to cause the death of a sick person, even if it is dressed in compassion. Whoever listens to Planellas is left with the feeling that everything depends on a combination of morphine, sensitivity, and discretion. The firm ground of Catholic morality disappears under the mud of «discernment» managed case by case.
When it comes to women, the interview becomes a showcase of quotas. The archbishop proudly enumerates the number of women in his diocese: general chancellor, foundation director, secretaries, judges of the ecclesiastical tribunal, heads of delegations. The female presence in governing bodies becomes a central argument, as if the Church were a company obliged to present its equality report to public opinion. Up to that point, there would actually be no great problem: laypeople and laywomen can exercise many legitimate functions in diocesan life.
The real problem appears when the journalist asks about ordination. Instead of clearly recalling the Church’s teaching —that it has no power to ordain women—, Planellas enters the game of the «open question». He comments that in the West it is perceived as discrimination that a woman cannot be a priest, announces that the synod has left the question on the table, and drops the phrase that betrays him: he would not mind if a woman were a deaconess or priest; what worries him is that the Church divides. Doctrinal truth ceases to be the criterion; now the criterion is the sociological peace of the institution. If the doctrine could be changed without breaking unity, it does not seem that he would have any major inconvenience.
The most disturbing thing is that the interview presents this slippage as normalcy. It is taken for granted that tradition is an obstacle, firm magisterium a problem that will have to be «discerned» later, and fidelity a kind of fundamentalist rigidity. The universal Church is spoken of to justify tactical prudence —because in Africa and Asia this is not swallowed so easily—, but not to recall that Catholic faith does not depend on polls or correlations of forces between ideological blocs.
The same pattern is seen when the LGTB theme, new forms of family, and the document Fiducia supplicans are addressed. Planellas avoids saying that marriage, according to the Church, is indissolubly the union between a man and a woman ordered to procreation. He limits himself to repeating that «the Church thinks that marriage is a man and a woman», almost as a footnote, and puts all the weight on Francis’s rhetoric: listen, do not condemn, accompany, value the positive. He presents the possibility of blessing homosexual couples as an interesting advance, the great contribution of the pontiff, without a single reservation about the scandal and confusion this has generated among the faithful. The blessing ceases to be a gesture ordered to conversion and growth in grace to become a kind of institutional caress to any affective situation that claims recognition.
The issue of religious and conscientious freedom is dispatched with a simplistic identification: «Freedom of conscience is equivalent to religious freedom». Conscience is presented as an untouchable, almost absolute space, where each one decides what they want to believe as long as they do not bother others too much. Not a trace of conscience as a judgment that must conform to the truth and that can be erroneous, culpably or not. Not a word about the Church’s duty to form and correct that conscience. The conciliar decree on religious freedom is cited as a banner, but without the slightest effort to integrate it into the previous tradition; it is enough to invoke it to justify a kind of practical relativism in which each one «discerns» their faith, their morals, and their god to measure.
When the conversation turns to Leo XIV, the portrait that Planellas makes of the new Pope is revealing. He speaks of «integrist tendencies» that would want to go back to before the Second Vatican Council, presents the polarization within the Church as a reflection of worldwide political polarization, and places the American pontiff as the man called to appease those sectors, maintaining a «clear» social line in favor of the poor. What is important, for this scheme, is not the restoration of doctrine or liturgy, nor the correction of theological and moral abuses that have devastated the Church for half a century, but to ensure that the ship continues in the same direction, but with somewhat more moderate gestures.
Planellas celebrates that the first document of Leo XIV is about the poor, clearly sees the nod to Leo XIII and Rerum novarum, and fits the new pontiff into the narrative desired by the ecclesial left: absolute priority to the social, to the discourse on capitalism, to the new «revolution» of artificial intelligence… all without touching, not even remotely, the doctrinal and liturgical demolition suffered in recent decades. That an archbishop well-regarded by Público declares himself so comfortable with the new Pope is not a minor detail: it is a symptom that many expect continuity with Francis, only with fewer scandalous gestures and more quiet management of the crisis.
In the economic terrain, the script repeats itself. The Church appears as a victim of the system: much patrimony to sustain, few aids, need for the IRPF box, difficulty of self-financing. It is forgotten, by the way, that thinking seriously about a Church sustained by real faith and the commitment of its faithful, and not by an anonymous flow of state money, would be a sign of ecclesial maturity. Instead of opening that reflection, the status quo is defended: the box represents 40% of income, without it one does not get by, and on the inmatriculations «it has been exaggerated quite a bit». The excesses are recognized in a generic way, but always from self-complacency: we have done what the law allowed, perhaps in some places we went too far, in others we fell short… Nothing that smells of true amendment or serious examination of conscience.
At the end of the reading, what remains of this interview is a clear portrait: that of an archbishop perfectly adapted to the current cultural regime. Tough on Vox, soft on abortion. Understanding of blessings for homosexual couples, uncomfortable with the faithful who pray the rosary. Moved by abuse victims as long as the episcopal framework that allowed those abuses is not questioned. Open to deaconesses and priestesses, concerned only with the internal fractures that this may cause. Delighted with a pontificate that maintains social priority while marginalizing any serious attempt to restore faith and liturgy.
Not a single truly uncomfortable word for the world is heard from him about the centrality of Christ, the objective gravity of sin, the need for conversion, the duty to confess the truth «in season and out of season». The only visible hardness is reserved, of course, for the Catholics who bother the established order: those who pray at the door of abortion clinics, those who denounce doctrinal chaos, those who resist reducing the Gospel to a spiritual supplement to the globalist agenda. Público has found in Joan Planellas its ideal archbishop. The question is whether the faithful of Tarragona —and of the entire Church— have the right to something more than an amiable manager of the collapse: a pastor who speaks clearly, who calls evil by its name, who defends the little ones, including those who will never be born.