Pope Francis received the controversial nun Sister Lucía Caram and team members of the Spanish-language news portal Religión Digital, which regularly publishes content contrary to Catholic doctrine.
The pope’s March 13 audience with Caram and the Religión Digital journalists went unmentioned in the Vatican Press Office’s daily news brief.
In an article, Religión Digital, now in its 25th year, stated that the Holy Father met with its members for half an hour and reportedly encouraged the team: “Do not lose hope. Continue fighting for this living Church and making it known.”
The article noted that the pontiff met with the visitors in “the back room of the Paul VI Hall, (la auletta),” which is “the same office where he received [Volodymyr] Zelensky, [Nicolás] Maduro, and Raúl Castro,” presidents of Ukraine, Venezuela, and Cuba, respectively.
Participating in the audience with the pope were Caram, a Dominican nun; the director of Religión Digital, former priest José Manuel Vidal; journalists José Lorenzo and Jesús Bastante; and Father Ángel García Rodríguez, president of the nongovernmental organization Messengers of Peace.
Topics such as “the Church in Spain, future challenges, his health, extreme critics, the question of seminaries, future trips, and the validation of Vatican II” were discussed.
“Vatican II was a midfield goal for the Church, which has done us a lot of good, and which was necessary, although not everything has yet been put into effect,” the pope reportedly commented.
According to Religión Digital, the group gave Pope Francis on the 11th anniversary of his pontificate “a special gift: the tens of thousands of messages of support received in the RDconelPapa campaign [‘Religión Digital [Is] with the Pope’] that came from all corners of the world,” for which the Holy Father expressed his great appreciation.
Caram commented on Facebook that “we saw a serene pope, he looked very well. We were able to talk, listen, and share. I gave him a gift that moved him: a case with the book of the Gospels and psalms that a soldier had on him when he died on the front” in the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Who is Sister Lucia Caram?
Caram, 57, is a Dominican nun from Argentina who lives in Spain. She is known for various controversial positions, such as her support for Catalonia’s independence from Spain.
In 2023 she spoke out in favor of homosexual couples being able to “marry in the Church.”
In 2017, in an interview with porn actor Nacho Vidal, the nun criticized that “for a long time the Church has dedicated itself to stoning those who weren’t living according to the norm.”
In 2014, she told La Opinión de Málaga online news that “those who freely make the decision [to abort] have to be the people [involved]. The Church cannot meddle in there. Not even God, who made us free for a reason.”
In 2013, interviewed by the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, the nun defended the use of contraceptive methods and claimed that “hell does not exist.”
It should be noted that an audience with the pope is not a papal endorsement by association with the person or persons visiting him or their views and that the Vatican Press Office does not confirm or deny statements allegedly made by the pope in such private audiences or nonpublic interviews.
What is Religión Digital?
Religión Digital is a website that regularly publishes content contrary to the doctrine of the Catholic Church. One of its most controversial articles, written by the Jesuit priest Juan Masiá, denied the virginity of Mary. On the same portal, on another occasion Masiá defended euthanasia.
Caram has also been a contributor to the portal.
In 2016, the well-known Spanish priest and demonology expert Father José Antonio Fortea told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, that Religión Digital was “a website that continually promoted all authors who attacked dogma and the ecclesiastical hierarchy.”
Fortea questioned that some Catholics finance Religión Digital and warned that the portal is a “source of waters poisoned by heterodoxy.”
After Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation from the pontificate in February 2013, a month before the election of Pope Francis, Religión Digital published on its front page: “The problem is not the pope… the problem is the papacy.”
