Pope Leo XIV has chosen Friar Octavi Vilà Mayo, a Cistercian monk, former abbot of Poblet and bishop of Girona since April 2024, as the new archbishop of Barcelona. He succeeds Cardinal Juan José Omella, who turned eighty, thereby losing his status as an elector, and today announced his farewell after nearly eleven years leading the archdiocese. The dioceses of Barcelona and Girona called separate midday press conferences to announce the changeover, on a day marred by the general strike in Catalonia.
Vilà’s name had topped the shortlists for weeks. In early October these pages already identified him as the candidate of Omella and Cobo, an archbishop with a discreet profile who would not overshadow anyone in the Episcopal Conference. He arrives in the Barcelona see at the age of 64—he will turn 65 on 11 December—and has more than a decade ahead before he must submit his resignation at 75.
From the newspaper archive to the cloister
Born in Tarragona in 1961, Vilà is a graduate in Geography and History and holds a diploma in Library Science from the University of Barcelona, with postgraduate studies in new information technologies and cultural management. He worked for more than twenty years in the newspaper archive of Tarragona and served as secretary and vice-president of the Bibliographic Archive of Santes Creus. He entered Poblet in July 2005, at the age of 43; made his solemn profession in 2010, was ordained priest on 1 May 2015 and, seven months later, his brothers elected him abbot. His priestly life totals barely eleven years, nine of them with an abbatial crozier.
Francis appointed him bishop of Girona on 29 February 2024, after two years of vacancy following the death of Francesc Pardo. He was the first monk to head that diocese in almost six centuries. He chose as his motto a sentence of St Bernard, “Praesis ut prosis”—to preside in order to serve—and a wooden pectoral cross.
Two and a half years in Girona
His brief time in Girona leaves a mixed record. The diocese, with more than 380 parishes and a clergy that is scarce and ageing, has seen its deaneries halved, from thirteen to six, while celebrations of the Word led by laypeople and the presence of women in the curia have grown, including the first woman judge of the ecclesiastical tribunal. An opinion piece published in InfoVaticana in September described a diocese in a state of agony, under pressure from a veteran group of priests with a post-conciliar agenda, and recalled that the bishop’s office still refuses to cede a church to the young and growing community requesting the Traditional Mass.
Regarding abuse cases, Vilà created a commission outside the bishop’s building and has closed two old cases whose perpetrators had already died. As abbot he had already dealt in 2021 with the arrest of a monk from Poblet for inappropriate touching of a girl, a case in which he declared that the community was ashamed and would cooperate with the authorities.
The abbot of the process
His political profile is well known. On 21 September 2017, ten days before the illegal referendum, he signed, together with the abbot of Montserrat, Josep Maria Soler, a statement calling on the Catalan and Spanish governments for dialogue and prudence, reminding them of their duty to interpret the common good “listening to the voice of the majority”. He later visited the imprisoned pro-independence leaders in prison, a gesture Omella always declined. He maintains a cordial relationship with Carles Puigdemont, who celebrated his arrival in Girona in 2024, thanking Francis for the appointment. As abbot he also received the King and Queen in 2020, in a visit rejected by the independence movement. In June, ahead of the Pope’s visit to the Sagrada Família, he publicly asked that the blessing of the Jesus tower be pronounced in Catalan.
Barcelona thus receives an archbishop aligned with Catalanist circles, appreciated for his simplicity and life of prayer, yet whose critics doubt he possesses the governing temperament demanded by Spain’s second see. Girona was a small, impoverished diocese. Barcelona is another matter.