Nicolau Pons, the maverick Jesuit who denounced the abuses of the Church, dies at 98.

PalmNicolau Pons Llinàs, a Jesuit from Artà, has died at the age of 98. In April 2024, he received the ARA Baleares at the Monti-sion monastery, with the serenity with which he faced the end: "Death doesn't frighten me. I can already be thankful for having reached 97." That conversation, which we now revisit as a tribute, traces a life marked by the Spanish Civil War, exile in Latin America, his sympathy for liberation theology, the conflict with the Society of Jesus, and his courageous denunciation of abuses within the Church.

"Death doesn't frighten me. I can already be thankful to have reached 97." Nicolau Pons Llinàs greets us at the Monti-sion convent in the center of Palma. He moves around with a walker and keeps cracking jokes: "Here, I'm the captain, the oldest of a group of four nonagenarian priests. There are four more who are eighty and four in their seventies." The Jesuit assumes that they will all have to move elsewhere given the recent transfer of the property to the Asturian businessman Víctor Madera, CEO of the Quirón Group: "He wants to build a healthcare facility. Some of my colleagues have criticized him. But something had to be done to renovate the school. The students will also have to be moved to the Society's new facilities in Son Moix."

Pons was born in Artà in 1927. He was nine years old when the Civil War broke out. On August 31, 1936, he witnessed Italian pilots, allies of the rebel Spanish military, bomb the town, unaware that it was under their control. At that time, Captain Bayo's Republican troops, who had landed in Portocristo two weeks earlier, already controlled San Lorenzo and Son Servera. "There were about ten dead, and fighting was everywhere. Days later, the Nationalists conscripted my father, who had been mayor for the Liberal Party. They sent him to fight against Bayo's men. My mother said goodbye to him in a flood of tears. By the time she arrived in Son Servera, they had already left. Once home, she exclaimed, 'The Immaculate Conception of San Salvador has saved us!'"

In 1940, the man from Artana entered the Vell Seminary in Palma. In a family of five children, it was a welcome escape from the terrible postwar years of hunger. "I was there for ten years. It was an absolute waste of time. It was like a prison, with very strict teachers and terrible food. Then I began a correspondence with a cousin of mine who lived in Montevideo (Uruguay). He was the son of one of my father's brothers who had taken to having affairs in 1910. He encouraged me to join the order. Since I didn't have a girlfriend, I thought it would be good to be under the protection of a religious congregation. I completed my formation in Zaragoza and Barcelona."

Sympathy for Che

In 1956, having already been ordained a priest, Pons was assigned to Bolivia by the Society of Jesus. Two years later, he moved to Argentina to finish his studies. He would return to Bolivia in 1963. A year earlier, following the Second Vatican Council convened by Pope John XXIII, the Liberation Theology movement had been gaining momentum, a Christian current born to combat the oppression and underdevelopment of Latin American countries. "I," the Jesuit says, "felt sympathy for that movement. Since I had always enjoyed writing, I started editing a magazine on social issues." That publishing project began to unsettle the Society, especially after November 5, 1966, the day the Argentine guerrilla fighter Ernesto Guevara, better known as Che, arrived in Bolivia. In 1959, in Cuba, he had participated with Fidel Castro in the revolt against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. After having tried to take his struggle to the Congo, the communist leader traveled to the Andean country to begin a gigantic Latin American revolution. "I never met him," the craftsman notes. "Then, however, I wrote an editorial defending his cause. Immediately, my superior warned me that I should avoid addressing political topics in the magazine. They were topics I didn't dare touch on at Mass, in homilies, but I did in writing."

On October 8, 1967, Che, 39 years old, was captured by the Bolivian army, which had the support of the CIA. He was executed the following day in the town of La Higuera. The atmosphere in Bolivia grew tense in August 1971 with the military coup of Hugo Banzer. Pons left the country by plane, along with other religious figures. Having spent a short time in Argentina, he decided to return to Spain. "The Jesuits in Mallorca," he says, "snubbed me because they said I was a communist. So I moved to Madrid to take a theology course. A year later, a friend invited me to live in Germany. I was only there for a year. I found it too different a country and I left for Mallorca again."

Jeroni Alomar

Repudiated by his own people, in 1974, at the age of 47, Pons rushed to ask for help from Bishop Teodor Úbeda, who had assumed the position a year earlier: "He told me that in America there were already Jesuits who had parishes, but that in Spain it was still not very common. He did not hesitate to offer me the one in Can." In the early eighties, the man from Artà began to grasp the scale of the Civil War, which he had experienced as a child: "In a house in Sa Pobla, I saw a huge painting of a priest. His sister-in-law, Antònia Cladera Crespí, whom I listened to with great emotion.

Alomar came from a well-to-do family. When the war broke out, he was imprisoned for denouncing the arrest of his brother Francisco, a member of the Republican Left of Muro. He was released after a few days, but was arrested again at the end of 1936. Francesc Barrado, the Palma police chief, set a trap for him. The rascal was trying to help two deserters, Joan Baldú and Martí Ros, escape to Menorca. The sentence for all three was death. The man from Lubiner was shot in the early hours of June 7, 1937, against the outer wall of the Palma cemetery. Bishop Josep Miralles didn't lift a finger to save him.

In 1995, after a long process of research, Pons rescued from oblivion the tragedy of the well-known 'capellà roig' with the publication of Jeroni Alomar Poquet. The Mallorcan priest shot by the fascists in 1937 (Leonard Muntaner, Editor): "The book had a great impact. I was worried about being arrested by the military. That year I also pressured Bishop Úbeda to officiate a funeral for him. Initially, he was a little afraid, but he finally agreed. The family was there." Some time later, the Jesuit received two unexpected visits at Can Picafort: "After Mass, a man approached me and told me that he was one of the ten soldiers in the guerrilla group that shot Alomar. They confessed. They deeply regretted having participated in that crime."

Pointing out pedophiles

Pons was in charge of the parish of Can Picafort for 22 years. He left in 1996. He was astonished when Bishop Úbeda told him the name of his replacement, Pere Barceló, 43, a native of Alquería Blanca. "I," he notes, "have family in Cala Rajada, his former parish, and I had already received reports of inappropriate behavior he had engaged in with minors there. The bishop was also aware of it." After some time, the Jesuit was able to confirm his worst suspicions in person: "I still had the keys to the church of Can Picafort. One day, the catechist Mateu Ferrer, who now works as a journalist in [publication name missing], accompanied me." Daily of MallorcaWhile I was looking for some books, he went up to the rectory. When he opened the door, he found Barceló abusing a half-naked, 10-year-old girl.

Ferrer was the one who reported the events to the Bishopric and the Public Prosecutor's Office in 1998. "He," the artisan emphasizes, "was a hero. There are still priests who don't speak to me because I supported him." That complaint, however, was dismissed because, in her court statement, the minor, threatened by her abuser, denied everything. In 2010, twelve years later, now an adult, she would dare to confess. The monsters in my houseDedicated to sexual abuse.

In 2013, before the ordinary courts had ruled, Barceló became the first priest expelled from the Spanish Church for a case of pedophilia. In 2016, he was sentenced to six years in prison after admitting to raping the victim a dozen times. He currently faces a new trial for abusing another minor. The memory of all these episodes has left Pons exhausted. At 97, he is reluctant to leave Monti-sion to enjoy a Mallorca he no longer recognizes. "Tourism," he laments, "has pushed our island and our culture to the brink."