A Spanish Bishop, identified as Xavier Novell, 52 has reportedly resigned from his post after falling in love with a divorced author of satanic-themed eroticas.
According to Religion Digital, Novell resigned from his post as Bishop of Solsona in Catalonia for “strictly personal reasons”.
It was reported that Novell had fallen for Silvia Caballol, a divorced mother-of-two and ‘wanted to do the right thing.’
Caballol, 38, is a writer of erotic novels featuring characters ‘possessed by the demon of lust’, a fact which has raised eyebrows among Novell’s former colleagues.
He reportedly met Caballol, a psychologist who has studied sexology, yoga, Catholicism and Islam, after he began studying demonology.
Her books are described by her publisher as turning ‘all our moral and ethical considerations upside down.’
The Hell in Gabriel’s Lust, Caballol’s most recent book, promises ‘prisons, psychopathy, sects, sadism, madness, lust and, little by little, as the story progresses… the unreality of immortality and the crude struggle between good and evil, between God and Satan, and between angels and demons.’
Novell had been seen as a star on the rise within Spain’s Catholic church after being appointed as the country’s youngest bishop in 2010 when he was just 41.
However his ascent stalled, The Times reported, with the election of Pope Francis in 2013.
Francis has edged the Vatican towards more liberal stances than those espoused by his traditionalist predecessor Pope Benedict XVI.
Novell, who has defended gay conversion therapy and described abortion and euthanasia as ‘genocide’, is out of step with the mood of the church under Francis.
His resignation was accepted by the Pope and the church has not commented.
