Unholy fuss about controversial play

CARDINAL ANTONIO CAÑIZARES, Archbishop of Valencia, joined Vox in condemning the forthcoming play Poder i Santedat (Power and Holiness).
The production, due to open at Valencia’s Teatro Principal on October 16, is announced with a poster based on a Banksy graffito, with the two kissing policemen substituted by an unidentified and unidentifiable pope and child.
The play by Manuel Molins and directed by Francisco Azorin has been sponsored with public money and “offends Catholics,” the ultra-right wing party complained.
“It is absolutely repugnant that political representatives should decide that the Catholic church can be attacked, that it can be humiliated,” declared Joaquin Ales, a Vox MP in the regional parliament.
Cardinal Cañizares was not slow to echo Ales’s sentiments.
Poder i Santedat is “lamentably” financed by official Valencian bodies and produced in a Valencian theatre, he complained, “in clear violation of the inalienable right to religious freedom.”
Last Monday, the Association of Christian Lawyers announced that it had asked the Valencia courts to cancel the production as a precautionary measure, accusing it of “crimes against religious beliefs and prevarication.”
The association maintained that the Poder i Santedat accused the Church’s “maximum authority and the Roman Curia of pederasty” although 74-year-old Molins told El Pais that the play’s critics should “read it” before making a judgement from the poster.
Molins, who is a Catholic, studied for almost 12 years in a seminary and retains “great friends” from his time there.  “I’ve always been a Catholic and have never renounced my faith.  But that doesn’t stop me from being a critic,” he said.