Spanish bishop who married erotica author is stripped of powers | Spain
Gabriel Cooper Publish date: 2023-12-17
Xavier Novell i Gomà was Spain’s youngest bishop before abandoning clerical career to marry Silvia Caballol
A Spanish bishop has been formally stripped of his powers and prohibited from administering the sacraments four months after he abandoned his clerical career to marry a “dynamic and transgressive” erotic novelist.
Xavier Novell i Gomà, who became Spain’s youngest bishop at 41 when he was appointed to the Catalan municipality of Solsona in 2010, is reported to have backed and participated in so-called conversion therapies for gay people, and has been criticised for supporting regional independence.
But the bishop, now 52, found himself under increased national scrutiny at the end of August when it emerged that he had resigned from his post on what he termed “strictly personal grounds”.
It soon emerged that Novell had abandoned his vocation because he had fallen in love with Silvia Caballol, a clinical psychologist who became a novelist in 2015.
At the time, the bishop apparently told his friends: “I’ve fallen in love with a woman, for the first time in my life, and I want to do things right.”
In a statement released on Saturday, the Spanish Episcopal Conference said Novell had automatically forfeited his powers after marrying Caballol in a civil ceremony last month.
“As is public and well known, Monsignor XavierNovell i Gomà, bishop emeritus of Solsona, contracted civil marriage with Doña Silvia Caballol y Clemente in Súria, Barcelona province, on 22 November,” it said.
The statement added that Novell was now forbidden under canon law from “exercising any of the rights and duties inherent to the episcopal office”, and warned that “other possible consequences” could follow.
“This means that although Monsignor XavierNovell i Gomà retains his title as bishop, he cannot undertake any of the functions that relate to that title. Accordingly, he is forbidden to administer the sacraments or engage in any teaching activity, whether public or private.”
Caballol’s publisher, Lacre, describes the writer as “a dynamic and transgressive author who’s made her mark on the thorny world of literature by turning all our moral and ethical questions upside down”.
According to the Lacre website, her Amnesia trilogy is about “the logical against the illogical, the rational against the irrational, good against evil, and madness against sanity.”
Novell, who has a degree in agricultural engineering and who was ordained in 1997, is now reported to be working for a company that extracts and sells pig semen.
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