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Home – Religious Liberty News – Religious Freedom at Stake in Spain 

Religious Freedom at Stake in Spain 

Carlos García-Lorca Fernández

Imagine a government deciding which parts of a church are sacred. The altar, yes. The nave, no. The chapels, the dome, the atrium, the vestibule, and great bronze doors—no as well. The faithful may pray here, but not there, and only after passing through a state-run exhibition with a political and ideological message before entering. It might sound invented, but it is happening right now in Spain. 

The target is the Basilica of the Holy Cross in the Valley of Cuelgamuros. There is nothing else like it in the Christian world. It extends some 260 meters into the granite of the Sierra de Guadarrama, making it longer than St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Above it rises the tallest cross on earth, a 152-meter monument of stone.  

Consecrated in 1960 and entrusted since 1958 to a Benedictine abbey that reports directly to the pope, it contains beneath its floor the remains of more than 33,000 dead from both sides of the Spanish Civil War, including approximately 140 men and women whom the Church has raised to Her altars as saints, blesseds, and servants of God.  

It is a living temple and an immense cemetery, and it is sacred from end to end. While it was built during Francisco Franco’s regime, the space was entrusted entirely to the Catholic Church. However, Spain’s socialist government is now using the site’s history as a pretext to undermine religious freedom. 

A religious site is sacred in its entirety. A Catholic basilica is not merely religious at the altar and during the celebration of Mass. Its doors, its naves, and its chapels are dedicated to divine worship. And no government—none—has the authority to walk in and decide which of those spaces remain sacred and which do not.  

What a faith considers sacred is for that faith to determine. This is neither a minor nor a sectarian matter. Religious freedom is........

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