Quart campaigns to preserve Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas

Quart campaigns to preserve Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas by turning an ostensibly neutral investigation into a defense of the church’s historical and living value. His final report helps secure instructions to preserve the building and appoint a new parish priest, but the result comes at the cost of the strict impartiality imposed on his mission.

Mission and Constraints

The assignment began in Rome as an information-gathering operation. The church had become the focus of two deaths in three months and of an unfolding scandal; Lorenzo Quart was sent to Seville for several days to identify the author of a letter, maintain prudent contact with local church authorities, and keep the matter discreet and reasonable. The director of the Institute for External Works favored an investigation rather than an intervention by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Cardinal Iwaszkiewicz considered too extreme.

Iwaszkiewicz narrowed Quart’s role further: the mission was only informational, and Quart was to maintain “exquisite neutrality,” avoid publicity, and submit his findings before concrete measures were chosen. The warning that publicly aired truth did not always make people free framed the investigation as a test of institutional discretion as much as fact-finding. Quart’s eventual advocacy therefore represents a consequential departure from the role he had been assigned.

The Church and the Threat of Demolition

In Seville, the threatened demolition proved to be entangled with both ecclesiastical discipline and property. Archbishop Corvo explained that secularizing the building was a prerequisite to its demolition, but an old privilege granted in 1687 required Mass every Thursday for the soul of Gaspar Bruner de Lebrija, the church’s benefactor. As long as that obligation was met, the church retained its privileges. Corvo had sought the suspension of Father Príamo Ferro, whose personal positions defied his pastoral directives, but Rome had not yet acted.

The church’s precarious state was not simply a matter of structural ruin. Gris Marsala, the architect responsible for its restoration, said that the building had been neglected for a century and a half, while its structure remained sound and its walls and vault had no irreparable cracks. Most damage lay in the plaster, caused by moisture entering through defective roofs. Marsala described how she and Father Óscar Lobato had repaired the roofs with lime, cement, and sand, carrying almost ten tons of material up to a height of fifteen metres. The contrast between a visibly battered interior and a repairable structure undermined the case for treating demolition as inevitable.

Marsala had worked on the restoration for two years under a project initially funded in part by the Eurnekian Foundation, which supplied one-third of the original budget. The other two members of the original team had left, funds had failed to arrive, and work had nearly stopped. To her, the church’s three centuries of history made its neglect especially stark; its age and deterioration were not proof that it lacked value.

The Thursday Mass and the Stakes of Continuity

Macarena Bruner explained how the old privilege shaped the church’s immediate vulnerability. Every Thursday at eight in the morning, Mass had to be said for Gaspar Bruner de Lebrija, who had died on a Thursday in 1709. At each service, an emissary of the archbishop and a notary paid by Pencho Gavira watched from the last row, alert for any mistake or lapse. A missed service or failure to observe the formula could remove the protection and leave the way open for the Archbishopric of Seville and Banco Cartujano to demolish the church.

The parish’s poverty made that obligation harder to sustain. The church’s collection did not cover even the cost of candles, Father Ferro’s salary was small, and Macarena and the duchess had only enough for their own living expenses. With Father Óscar facing removal from the parish, Macarena feared that the church’s opponents might act against Ferro, whose continued ministry was essential to keeping the Thursday Mass—and therefore the privilege—alive. The building’s fate depended not only on a legal instrument but on the vulnerable continuity of a local religious practice.

Report, Disobedience, and Outcome

After Quart submitted his report, Paolo Spada told him that the Pope had received it, as had a separate report from Archbishop Corvo mentioning Quart. Spada reminded him that the task had been to play an impartial role for the Institute for External Works. Quart answered that he had known his intervention was unlikely to change matters and had acted as a symbol; nevertheless, there were moments when such gestures mattered.

The intervention was not entirely symbolic. Spada reported that the Apostolic Nunciature in Madrid and the Archbishopric of Seville had received instructions to preserve Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas and appoint a new parish priest. He credited the report’s closing reflections—including its image of a piece of heaven disappearing and its comparison to an old, patched drum—with making the appeal moving and convincing. The outcome joined institutional action to a rhetorical appeal: Quart did not merely record the church’s condition, but made its loss legible as more than a technical or property matter.

Preservation did not amount to a final resolution of every conflict surrounding the parish. The reported decision protected the church and provided for a new priest, while the evidence establishes no completed restoration or settled future for its finances. What Quart achieved was more immediate and specific: he helped prevent demolition and ensured that the church’s survival would not be decided solely by those seeking its secularization.