Cristina Moreira, the First Woman in Spain to Officiate Mass by Domingo Diaz and José Verdugo
/Cristina Moreira, the First Woman in Spain to Officiate Mass
by Domingo Diaz and José Verdugo
El Español | 20 August 2022
Cristina Moreira, the First Woman in Spain to Officiate Mass and Is Also Married to a Priest. The presbyter, married to the priest Victorino Pérez, opens the doors of her particular parish for us: "We are going to create an inclusive LGTBI chapel"
As soon as you get out of the elevator on the fourth floor, there is a gloomy corridor and four wooden doors. In one of them there is a sign: Parish of San Pablo. It's not there. If you turn left, you catch a glimpse of the only blue door on this floor and, above it, a name: Codeli (Book Cooperative). There it is. This is where Cristina Moreira, the first Roman Catholic woman priest in Spain celebrates her Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Mass whenever she can.
She welcomes us to this unusual house of God. There are at least two dozen chairs around an office table. ‘This is our altar,’ says the priest as she places a tablecloth on top and prepares it for the service. Christ on the cross, Pope John XXIII, his counterpart Francisco or the Virgin Mary are some of the paintings that decorate the white walls of this space where the Galician Catholic community of Home Novo meets.
Do you feel like a rebel for saying those words?
—I feel the dissidence of course. I have no other choice because I am working against what is done and what is commonly accepted as correct in my institution. Rebel, certainly. If someone puts one foot in front of me and prevents me from being who I am, saying it and doing it, I have to rebel in my own right, to defend my sovereignty and that of all people who are like me. My priesthood basically consists in facilitating, providing the means and welcoming everyone, everyone, every being who wants to be welcomed. I am not the one to hinder anyone or reduce and narrow the path that leads to God. My job is to point the way,to open up, embrace, welcome unconditionally as God who is my Master does, without labeling or asking anyone who they are or how they are or how they love. If that places me in rebellion and disobedience, then blessed disobedience, because that is how I have understood the Gospel. This is what I understand in my prayers when I speak with Christ, who throughout his ministry has been welcoming sick, people considered sinners, women who were not in their proper place in society and constantly healing the person who was. If I don't do this job --I can resign right now -- I wouldn't be doing the right thing.
Canon Law punishes those women who are ordained priests with excommunication. However, Moreira assures that nothing has come to her. ‘The first ordained women did receive the document. [The Vatican] doesn’t even bother anymore. They just say: consider yourselves excommunicated. And we are amused because communion is held with these hands and I celebrate it here every Sunday. And more days if I feel like it. No one can separate me from this sacrament because I am a minister of this sacrament".
Moreira is not hiding so as not to be excommunicated. Far from it. She asserts that ‘in Rome they receive our letters and we have been there clothed in our vestments.’
God's call
Cristina speaks with certainty of what she says. She has support. She knows that she is not alone. She knows that she is not doing something crazy. However this was not always so. She was barely a teenager when she felt the call. ‘I told a priest and he didn't listen to me. That's where my reflection began: if I were a boy, they would have rolled out the red carpet for me. They would have sent me to the Vocations Commission or whatever it was in the bishopric. They would have thought to focus everything correctly’.
So she start living it in silence and alone. She told a friend and later a new priest. ‘His exact words were: I firmly believe that this is a true vocation. But I tell you that you have to shut up and you have to keep this in silence and live it as a sacrifice before the Lord, because you know that it is forbidden. And that even the people who listen to you could be in danger. Women cannot be ordained. The church is what rules and you have to obey.’
Moreira becomes silent. ‘I realized that there was a baptism for men and another for women. A feminism that is also deeply rooted in the Gospel is born there. I am a feminist by the grace of God, and this is true, not a formula.’
The passing of the years did not make Cristina change her mind. Adolescence passed, she married, had a daughter, her marriage was declared void. She was working in the Church when she fell in love with the parish priest Victorino Pérez. The attraction was mutual. They both officiated their civil and also Catholic wedding. The official Church does not recognize the marriage because he continued to be a priest in a canonical irregularity. He did not ask for secularization or seek dispensation from the archbishop which is required by Canon Law.
She told him of her vocation to be a priest. The final step would not come until years later. ‘Benedict XVI released that famous decree condemning the priests who abused children and classifying it as the most serious crime that can be committed in the Church. Taking advantage of it, he added a clause to that same decree saying that ordaining a woman or that a woman celebrating mass is just as serious, entails the same punishments, the same penalties. When I read this, I decided that this is the day to pick up the phone and stop being an accomplice of that system. I no longer have a place in an institution where I am equated with a child rapist if I am ordained as a priest. So yes, now is the time to go for the dignity that I was, for what I am and give everything more than anything, too in solidarity with the victims of abuse, among whom are many women".
Spain’s first Roman Catholic Womanpriest, Cristina Moreira Celebrates Mass. Photo Jose Verdugo
A stole in jail
Obviously, the official Catholic Church does not take kindly to the ordination of a woman. However, that does not mean that Cristina and the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests continue to have a relationship with Rome and the Pope. The last time Moreira visited the Vatican, the stole she wears today was confiscated. ‘I love my stole very much. It has been in jail for me.’ The stole was later returned to her, but not without Moreira being given a hard time with some ecclesiastical representatives. ‘These are the relationships we have with the institution. I sincerely believe that they are afraid of us.’
-About what? What damage could you do to the institution?
—They tremble because they often say that our actions can divide the church and break it. It's curious. My reflection on this is the following: the church can allow itself to be broken, that is, to leave aside women, married priests, all marginalized groups such as LGBTI and others who are not completely heteronormative, binary, cisgender, Married people using birth control, all the people who have failed in a first marriage and have been lucky enough to find a second chance...’
—The Church acts as if it can afford to lose a lot of people, even in its own ranks, dispensing with the entire contingent that appears now of women willing to work in the institutional Church. That can be allowed. That's not a loss, that doesn't hurt. But suddenly, it is a problem in case all those who are resistant to ordaining women, to allowing priests to marry, leave the Church. This tells us where the power is. And this must be said. The power is in the hands of those who can tell the institution Church this, do not do it, because if we do not break the Church. The de facto break has already happened. There are many who are like me and a lot of other people who have been and are on the margins. And they should be thankful the margins exist for many others are already outside the margins and have left the Church forever. Fortunately, some have found a welcome in the Protestant churches. But many do not want to go to the Protestant church because the Catholic Church is their home. And they are not welcome into their own home.
Moreira calls for coherence in all the issues that the church addresses and a balance between the gospel and Canon Law. ‘I understand that there must be this set of rules to govern the institution. But when they collide with the gospel they do not listen to people, the words of Jesus do not count. She comments on abortion. ‘We have a clearly official doctrine that is anti-abortion, for the protection of life and an endless number of arguments that I respect and value. And then I hear stories of priests who make women or nuns pregnant and the church government’s response is that they abort to preserve the priest and that there be no scandal. I am asking for consistency’.
The priest believes that the institution must be reformed from top to bottom. ‘Because evil is systemic, because its own functioning is encouraging abuses to occur and that they occur with impunity,’ she says.
“We answer to God.”
Among the reforms that she proposes is the opening to all the people of God when it comes to making decisions, participation, the end of the prohibition on married priests and ordained women who can officiate the sacraments. ‘Women can provide healing, common sense, care... They have instilled it in us since we were little. The patriarchy has formatted us for these things, you have specialized us, tamed us for certain tasks. Emilia Pardo Bazán already said that when women are not educated, they are tamed. Well, while we're at it, why don't we take advantage of that?’
Women and Catholicism
Mary was the mother of Jesus. ‘The boss, the only one who can tell about my body and my blood. Christianity began with the announcement,’ says Moreira. Mary Magdalene also had a fundamental role in accompanying Jesus. ‘She was able to accompany him to the cross, where the men did not gather. If she had not believed in the resurrection, we would not be here. But history has decided to forget her because men have usurped the role of leadership and government from women since the time of the first Christian communities.’
Moreira also speaks of nuns who are even ‘more oppressed’ than lay women who are ordained. ‘There are nuns who are ordained but they have to leave the convents. And some do not want to lose their community because they are their life.’
At the moment, Cristina is the only ordained priest in Spain. She hopes that more women will join her soon. For now, the female role has taken a small step. In rural Spain there are already women who read the word of God or can offer communion, previously consecrated by a male priest. These cases have been seen, for example, in Tarragona, a diocese that refused to participate in a report similar to this one with this newspaper.
What do you think of this situation?
—All rivers flow into the sea. Anything that is for progress, it seems good to me, and each one will progress with the steps they can take. They are positive, but those small arrangements that are being made by women who give communion, who read the sermon written by the priest at mass, who celebrate these celebrations of the word... Those actions, if we analyze them carefully, what are they doing? ?
-Tell me
—They are favoring and accepting even more the patriarchal oppressive system that we have inside, because first they are accepting to be subsidiaries. That is to say, that they are accepting that they themselves do not have the dignity that is needed to be there. For this ministry there is a sacrament called the diaconate. This is what allows you to read the Gospels, bless and distribute communion. There is that paper. I have had it. I have been ordained a deacon. But the official Church won’t include women in this ministry. Why don't they include women in the diaconate? We continue to accept a subdignity, a subrole, a submission. We continue to accept that the dominant scheme prevails.
—And I say it in feminine because there is enough feminine submission. We are in female overbooking in submission and in male overbooking, not to say unanimous in the dominant position. So, these actions, as long as they do not touch the established schemes that I have just described, are admitted. And that is what is serious, because the issue of baptismal dignity is not being addressed, the issue of the equality of all the sons and daughters of God is not being addressed. Look, I'm not God's niece. Neither a distant cousin nor a sister-in-law. I am your daughter. Same as you. Don't deny me my dignity. I have been baptized with holy water, just like you. Therefore, I have a legitimate right first to feel called by God, among other things because God does what God wants and loves who God wants. And second, we answer to God.
Cristina is outraged: ‘I cannot go to the Code of Canon Law to look at what God's will is for me. I have a direct connection with God. And I learned it with great difficulty, realizing that God was calling me to ask me to remember God and to break bread and distribute wine to my community or to God’s other sons and daughters’.
These premises are based on the theology of liberation which grew in South America for the most part. Hence, with Pope Francis [he is from Argentina] there was great hope in ecclesiastical reform. Now they know not to, even if they start to listen to them, and they leave everything in God's hands: ‘He has his times, his manners and his way. When he has something between his eyebrows, he complies with it.’
Matter of faith
‘How can you believe in the Church when it rejects you?’
—A part of the Church rejects me. But the Church, the people of God, the immensely colorful, multifaceted and plural people of God does not reject me. It welcomes me and I feel deeply at home. We only hope that this cry that comes from below, which right now is being heard from the Synod consultations, for example, reaches the top. And that like a tide, that here we are in Galicia and we know what the tide is, I came to overflow and bring its effects.
—'How did you come to have your Community?'
—I belong to Home Novo in A Coruña, which has been in existence since the 1970s and was founded by the priest Manuel Espiña, of revered memory among us because he is the one who brought about all this. I asked the members of the Community what they would think and if it could contribute something to have me as a priest with my husband and they said yes. I have done the reverse path, which is not to impose a community named by someone above, but from within.
‘Is this a parallel Church?’
—No, it is a church within the Church, but it has ignored certain points of the internal regime, of the Internal Regulations, because we consider them unjust and the unjust law must be conscientiously violated.
—'Have you ever been told that this is a sect?'
-No.
‘And if they did? Sometimes it is done with orders outside the church like Jehovah's Witnesses.'
—The definition of the sect is a place where people are in a certain way against their will because they have been manipulated, coerced and they do not have their freedom and their means, their resources completely. Here people come and go when they want, how they want. We are not interested in their private lives other than to be able to help and we do not ask them for anything. Of course, we do not coerce anyone, nor do we manipulate anyone, nor have we brainwashed anyone.
Currently, the community that accompanies Cristina Moreira in A Coruña is small, about 15 people. ‘But we have projects to broaden our sights. For example, after the murder of Samuel Luiz here in A Coruña, LGTBI people called us to find a place to meet God in peace. So in September we will create an inclusive chapel so that everyone the world can come here and no one feels rejected.’
Politics and religion
Moreira defines herself as a person of the left. ‘I am of proletarian origin, I come from a working-class family, I grew up in a neighborhood in the north of Paris, where I was born and lived until I was an adult and moved to Spain. I am the daughter of republican, secular schools and from the outset I am quite satisfied with my position on the left, which is the place for rebels, dissidents and people who seek a better world and are willing to put their meat on the grill to work for that better world.’
—Was Jesus Christ the first communist?
—Today communism is like a forbidden word, a mixed bag where so many things fit that I no longer know what it means. When communism was understood with that utopian value of people who want a better, more egalitarian world, where wages are fair, where there are no longer exploited people, where the rights of all people are respected. When communism was thought like this, from that vision that many people still think about it, I did think at some point that the values that Jesus has brought and that the Gospel possesses could perfectly collaborate with that dream and that utopia, because they are very similar. Of course, Jesus, attentive to the poor, to the little ones, to the marginalized people, to the people who suffer, who ask that the naked be clothed, that the hungry be fed, that the sick be visited, that they take care of themselves who is wrong They are verbatim words of him.
—What do you think of the relationship of the Catholic Church with the extreme right?
With a faction of the Catholic Church.’ A very specific faction, with very specific values that I certainly do not share, because they hold macho, classist, often racist values, and oppressive values that seek to dominate others and say I command, you obey and I do not accept that. So my reaction is, from the outset, to reject that alliance and say that those Catholics do not represent me.
—Do you miss that the left is related to the Catholic Church?
—I don't know what we are talking about, maybe that we can of these parties that have gone together, a little out there. Many people in those parties and in those groups, in fact, are Christians. Another thing is that I am not taking communion with the Archbishop of Madrid or with the Archbishop of I don't know where, just as I am not taking Communion either, because I cannot make statements that prevent me from being consistent with that discourse. But that is full of Christians and Christians, perhaps disappointed by their institution.
And would we have to get them back?
-No. They are sovereign in knowing what they will have to do. My role is not to recover anyone, nor to promote proselytism, nor to go looking for people. What worries me is going to look for people who are lying down in case they think they might need me. That is why we are going to create the inclusive chapel. Let them know that we are here. Of course, I am concerned that the people of Coruña, in a case as dramatic as this, have called Madrid asking if there was a place in Coruña where they could meet to pray. Here is a place and there are people. If you believe in Christ, this is your home. You will not be asked anything else. And even if they don't believe in Christ, it's also their home.
https://www.elespanol.com/reportajes/20220820/cristina-moreira-primera-espanola-oficiar-catolica-izquierdas/691430993_0.htm
