The diocese of Almería, in Andalusia, is building an ecumenical church at Vera, the first at the diocesan level and one of the few in Spain. The church will be called “Church of Our Lady of the Valley” and is the property of the Catholic Church, which is offering “hospitality open to all other confessions” and “pastoral and liturgical attention to Anglicans, Orthodox and Evangelics”, said the bishop of the diocese, Adolfo González Montes, delegate of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference for the drafting of the European Ecumenical Charter (2001), in a briefing to SIR. Many English people and Germans live in the tourist area of the Almería, with the result that “the number of non-Catholics has sharply increased”. A further seven churches are under construction in the diocese, “because the population living on the coast has increased”, but only at Vera is there an ecumenical church. “Ecumenism is not a new invention. It involves us all”, stresses the bishop, who is a member of the Societas Oecumenica Europa. And commenting on the Pope’s illness, Msgr. Montes says: “He is an example of not being ashamed of his own suffering. He makes us see that suffering is a part of human life and that it unites us more closely to Christ and his Mother”.
