What Munilla was doing in that message was repeating a slogan spread by known Russian sympathizers. This is surprising coming from a bishop. Incidentally, I've noticed that Munilla only follows 28 accounts on Twitter. Two are very significant: Tucker Carlson, an American journalist and known spreader of Russian hoaxes who now also dedicates himself to promoting anti-Semitism; and a well-known Spanish military officer in the reserves whom readers of this blog will remember because he dedicated himself to discrediting those who warned of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying that they were bought and paid for and accusing them of being "instrumentalized by intelligence services to publish as dictated."

I don't know the degree of influence that certain very biased political commentators exert on the aforementioned bishop, but it's easy to verify. In the last two years, Munilla has repeatedly accused Israel of "genocide" up to five times on Twitter (here, here, here, here and five). In the almost 14 years he has been on Twitter, Munilla has also used that word twice to talk about the Rwandan genocide (here and here).

It is surprising to see the bias of the Bishop of Orihuela-Alicante when using that accusation, because as can be seen by searching for that word, Munilla has never published any tweet accusing Russia of "genocide" (four years of systematically massacring Ukrainian civilians, including children), nor speaking about the communist genocide (more than 100 million dead, among them the perpetrated by the world's largest dictatorship today, which is China), nor calling the massacres of Christians in the Middle East and Africa by Islamist terrorism genocide. It is the same bias that we can often see in left-wing parties, media, and activists.

This bias is also evident in another matter. Despite the massacres committed by terrorists and Islamist regimes in recent decades, many of them directed against the Christian population, Munilla has only mentioned Islam 6 times in almost 14 years on Twitter. During the same period, he has only made 3 mentions of Russia and 3 mentions of China. However, in the last 12 years, he has mentioned Netanyahu 5 times to criticize the Prime Minister of Israel. Interestingly, during all this time he has only made one mention on Twitter of the dictator Putin and not a single mention of the Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. It is certainly a curious bias in a bishop, but it is not an isolated case.

Following Hamas's brutal terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, the largest anti-Semitic massacre since the Holocaust, with hundreds of civilians (men, women, children, and babies) tortured and murdered, Munilla did not publish any tweets condemning that atrocity. Two days later he posted a tweet asking for prayers for peace, but six days after the attack, he posted a message criticizing both Hamas and Zionism (which is the defense of the Jewish people's right to have their own state), stating: "Hamas has declared a 'Friday of Rage'... Zionism tells us not to pray for peace, but for its victory..." Israel had just suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history, an attack proportionally larger than the 9/11 (taking into account the population of Israel), and what Munilla did was distribute criticism to attackers and those attacked, before launching into slandering the attacked country, repeatedly accusing it of "genocide," a false accusation that he has never directed against Putin.

I don't know if Setién left some kind of curse on the Diocese of San Sebastián, which leads the bishops who pass through there to exhibit such scandalous political biases. In any case, as a Catholic, I ask you to pray for Munilla, that God may open his eyes and make him realize the harm he does by engaging in such lamentable political activism on the international stage, and that he may remember what is stated in point 44 of the Directory for the Ministry and Life of Priests:

"The priest will be above all political partisanship, for he is a servant of the Church: let us not forget that the Bride of Christ, by virtue of her universality and catholicity, cannot be bound by historical contingencies. He cannot take an active part in political parties or in the leadership of trade unions, unless, according to the judgment of the competent ecclesiastical authority, the defense of the Church's rights and the promotion of the common good so require. Political and trade union activities are good in themselves, but they are foreign to the clerical state, since they can constitute a grave danger of rupture of ecclesial communion."

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Photo: Marek Studzinski.