Ambitious bishop, tainted by Francis mismanagement of an abuse scandal, promoted sideways by Pope Leo
InfoVaticana exlusive: Pope Appoints José Antonio Satué Bishop of Málaga
InfoVaticana give advance notice of the appointment, which will be made public tomorrow. Satué, promoted by Omella, arrives in Málaga as a consolation prize. His profile was weakened after the Gaztelueta case, and his aspirations for Barcelona are fading.
Pope Leo XIV will appoint José Antonio Satué, until now Bishop of Teruel and Albarracín, as the new Bishop of Málaga tomorrow. At the same time, the acceptance of Jesús Catalá's resignation will be made public.
With this decision, the Pope closes a new era and makes a new move in the complex Spanish episcopal landscape. Satué leaves a small diocese to take over one of the largest in the country, but he does so with a sense of consolation prize: his promoters, led by Cardinal Omella, hoped to place him in Barcelona, one of the main centers of ecclesiastical power in Spain.
Goodbye to Barcelona: the door closes
The Archdiocese of Barcelona will become vacant in the coming months, and everything pointed to Satué being the chosen one. However, according to InfoVaticana, the new Pope does not look favorably on Omella's attempt to pilot his own succession. Satué's transfer to Málaga practically rules out that possibility.
Barcelona brings with it a biretta, international visibility, and access to key circles. Málaga is an important diocese, but not one that carries political weight. Satué's appointment in the Andalusian capital is interpreted as a strategic shift: it avoids a break with the progressive bloc, but also marks a clear distance from the "tailor-made" appointments of the previous pontificate.
Satué, weakened after Gaztelueta
Another factor that has weighed on Satué's fate is his handling of the Gaztelueta case, in which he played a delicate role as an intermediary between Rome, the Diocese of Bilbao, and the Opus Dei community. His actions were perceived by many as erratic or ambiguous, and this left his image tarnished in sectors of the Curia.
Leo XIV, who wanted to distance himself from previous practices without unleashing an internal war, reportedly opted to keep Satué on the episcopal map.
Gaztelueta Case in Summary
In September 2022, Pope Francis ordered a retrial of former Gaztelueta School teacher José María Martínez, who had already been tried and acquitted by Cardinal Luis Ladaria in 2015. The retrial was ordered by the Pope at the request of the victim, made on a television program. Satué was appointed president-delegate of the Pope (judge) in the new canonical process.
This process has been criticized by both the accused and sources close to him, as well as by the professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Navarra, Fernando Simón Yarza, who warn that basic principles of a fair trial could be violated, such as the impartiality of the judge, the equality of the parties to the proceedings in the presentation of evidence, the presumption of innocence, the non-retroactivity of criminal laws, or the "non bis in idem" principle that prevents the same facts from being judged a second time.
In February 2024, Bishop Satué returned to the public eye by not taking a statement from witness Silverio Nieto, who conducted the preliminary investigation for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which concluded with the case being filed at that institution and an order to restore Professor Martínez's good name.
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