Writer: BBC News
Subject: Spanish bishop quit for love for erotic writer
Link: 09.09.2021/ BBC News / Thanks to Vic D for this lovely snippet of information — gives me hope that one day a cute effeminate priest will fall for me …
Spanish bishop quit for love for erotic writer
When Spanish bishop Xavier Novell resigned last month, the Roman Catholic Church cited strictly personal reasons without going into detail.
It has now emerged in Spanish media that he fell in love with a woman who writes Satanic-tinged erotic fiction. In 2010 at the age of forty-one, he became Spain’s youngest bishop, in Solsona in the north-eastern region of Catalonia. He has backed so-called conversion therapy for gay people and carried out exorcisms.
Seen as a rising star in Spain’s Catholic Church, his decision to resign with the Vatican’s approval came as a surprise last month. He is said to have met several times with Vatican officials as well as the Pope himself. Xavier Novell was traditional in his remarks on abortion but his strident views on homosexuality and outspoken support for Catalonian independence were controversial. It came as a shock when Religion Digital reported that he had fallen for divorcee Silvia Caballol, a psychologist and erotic novelist. The news site said that the former bishop was now looking for a job in the Barcelona area as an agronomist.
Caballol’s books include titles such as The Hell of Gabriel’s Lust and the trilogy Amnesia. In the blurb for one of her works, the reader is promised a journey into sadism, madness and lust and a struggle between good and evil, God and Satan with a plot to shake one’s values and religious beliefs. Neither the ex-bishop, who is now fifty-two, nor the novelist have responded to the reports although Religion Digital quoted him as saying “I have fallen in love and want to do things properly”. The diocese has since responded by emphasizing that “corroboration or not of this story is a strictly personal matter for him alone”.
The issue has again raised the issue of celibacy within the Church. In earlier interviews, Xavier Novell admitted that in his youth he had fallen in love with an eighteen-year-old girl and he had later wanted to marry and have children before deciding on a different path. His change of heart has prompted grumblings within the Church. Dominican nun Lucía Caram said he was “out of his mind” and criticized his promotion of “conversion therapy”.
Satan has to be amused by this.