The Diocese of Orihuela-Alicante will celebrate today, Saturday, March 14, the diocesan meeting of Christian women and men workers, organized by the Diocesan Secretariat for Pastoral Care of Work. The event will take place in the parish of Our Lady of Grace in Alicante, located in Plaza de la Montañeta.
The central conference of the meeting will be given by Manolo Copé Tobaja under the title «Democracy in the workplace: a view from the Social Doctrine of the Church». Copé is a councilor in the political space of Podemos in Alicante and was a candidate for mayor by the far-left coalition Unides per Alacant.
His profile is singular within a diocesan event. Copé was ordained a priest and served for approximately two years as a priest in the town of Callosa del Segura. He later left the priestly ministry and got married. Over time, he has developed intense activity in the field of communist unionism and far-left politics, with membership in Izquierda Unida, ties to Comisiones Obreras, and participation in various activist social platforms.
The meeting program will begin at 5:00 p.m. with the welcome of the participants. At 5:15 p.m., Copé’s conference and the subsequent dialogue with attendees will take place. The day will conclude at 7:00 p.m. with the celebration of the Eucharist presided over by the bishop of the diocese, Monsignor José Ignacio Munilla.
The choice of a political leader linked to the far left to address the Social Doctrine of the Church once again puts on the table a very widespread cliché in certain ecclesial circles: the idea that Catholic social thought would find its natural expression in class unionism or in the political approaches of the left. This is a deeply distorting falsification. The Social Doctrine of the Church arises from a Christian anthropology centered on the dignity of the person, the common good, subsidiarity, and social freedom, principles that historically clash with the postulates of radical left political thought.
The language used in the event’s promotional poster is also not overlooked, which adopts the usual ideological doubling with formulas like «Christian women and men workers». This type of expression, increasingly common in certain ecclesial spheres, introduces linguistic codes proper to woke political rhetoric that are completely unnecessary.
After years of public interventions marked by an intense fixation against Vox, one wonders if Munilla is not beginning a curious shift toward positions increasingly close to the dominant discourse of the ecclesial left. Who knows if in a while we will see him sharing a platform with Archbishop Planellas to explain to us that, in conscience, the responsible thing is to vote for Pedro Sánchez.