Madrid, Spain, Jan 3, 2006 / 22:00 pm
Bishop Demetrio Fernandez of Tarazona, Spain, has issued a letter denouncing a new film on St. Teresa of Avila that portrays her as a sex symbol and is the subject of an “orchestrated media campaign” to depict the saint solely “through the prism of sex.”
Teresa, Muerte y Vida (Teresa, Death and Life) is currently being shot in Spain by director Ray Loriga and stars Paz Vega as St. Teresa.
In his letter entitled, “Poor St. Teresa,” Bishop Fernandez noted the human and spiritual transcendence of the Spanish mystic who “made history before the arrival of the feminist movement,” and he lamented the media attention being given to “the filming of a movie that presents the saint as ‘morbidly sexy’.”
“The curious thing is that the people behind these absurd ideas tend to accuse the Church of being obsessed with sex, and it turns out they are the ones who see sex everywhere, they see sex even where there is none,” Bishop Fernandez maintained.