Lifefunder for CIM – Help this Spanish Catholic school to survive

(LifeSite League) — A Spanish school needs support to continue offering Catholic education in a part of the country that has now largely lost the faith.

Immaculate Heart of Mary (Corazón Inmaculado de Maria) school  was founded by Father José María Alba, S.J., in Sentmenat, a small town in the heart of Catalonia. The priest was inspired by the ideal “To work, to teach, to suffer so that Jesus Christ be the King of Spain and so His social kingship be recognized.”

Located in the northeast end of Spain, Catalonia, the birthplace of saints like Saint Peter Claver, Saint Anthony Marie de Claret, and Saint Teresa Jornet Ibars, is one of the autonomous communities of the country with the lowest marriage rates. Father Jose María Serra, the academic principal at the school, told LifeSite League that “this is probably the most de-christianized area of Spain.”

According to Ivan Blanco, a father of three children currently studying at Corazón Inmaculado de María school, Catalonia is “what we could call a laboratory of ‘the Revolution’.”

“It has given many saints, and that is precisely why it has been more attacked,” he explained to LifeSite League.

In an arduous battle against evil and the deception of these times, Corazón Inmaculado de María school has become a beacon of hope signaling the route toward the eternal shore through the darkness and the storms that whip mercilessly what once was ‘la Terra dels Sants,’‘the Land of the Saints.’ At this school, priests wear cassocks, conversions are frequent, students are eager to visit our Lord in the tabernacle, and parents would do anything to preserve the innocence of their children.

Everything began in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Barcelona, where the religious community founded by Fr. Alba, the Missionaries of Christ the King, managed a school called Academia Atlántida. According to Fr. Serra, an alumnus, the school was born to “serve young people where the Church almost did not have any presence, a place of great need.”

“The academy didn’t have one single space; it was scattered among many locations;everything was very close, but everything looked very ‘homey,’” Serra told LifeSite League.

By the end of the 1970s, Spain was changing. A regime change took place, and the new education reforms did not allow those kinds of ‘exotic’ arrangements anymore. Providentially, an empty school, 30 km away from Barcelona, seemed to be available. Alba saw God’s providential hand, and the school was transferred to the new location under a new name, “Corazón Inmaculado de María,” inspired by Alba’s love for Our Lady and the importance he gave to the Fatima apparitions. The school would be, from then on, “the home of the Virgin and a house where Our Lady forms her children.”

Alba’s intention with the school was to teach the doctrine of the Catholic Church to form men who would “serve these truths.” In the spirit of the founder, Serra underscored how important it is for the school to teach the students to be Catholic in every aspect of their lives.

“The teachings of the Catholic Church have to permeate the entire school life, from the classes to the way we dress, to how we think, to how we organize a musical night or a celebration with the graduates,” Serra said.

The school has between 3 and 4 daily Masses, competing in number, Serra commented, with some cathedrals in Spain. Children are required to attend Mass once a week, but they can and are encouraged to go to daily Mass with their families before the start of the school day. On Thursday nights, there are two shifts of Eucharistic adoration, one for men and one for women, in which families kneel before the Holy of Holies. Confessions are also very frequent.

“There is not a single moment we cannot come to confession,” Blanco told LifeSite League.

The faithfulness of the school to its Catholic identity has borne many fruits. Being in an area of Spain with high rates of immigration, Corazón Inmaculado de María has some students who were not raised in the faith and who are, thanks to the experience they have had at the school, are converting to Catholicism.

“We are having baptisms, confirmations; it is wonderful. You realize that the Holy Spirit is operating. I do not know what conversion ratios they have in other schools, but here we have them, and I have seen them,” Blanco said. “I have seen young men and women kneeling, coming to night adoration without being baptized, because they have converted butdo not have the approval of their families and have to wait until they are 18 years old.”

Many families have moved to the area to bring their children to school, while others have done the near-impossible for their children to study here. One father who was unable to find a job in the area, moved his family near the school anyway, and commutes 150 km every work day.

The rise of practicing Catholics in Sentmenat has led to an increase in families with many children.

“I do not remember the exact records right now, but some time ago, Sentmenat became the town in Catalonia with the highest rate of large families because of the families that came to the school,” Serra told LifeSite League.

The school has become a place of encounter for a faithful Catholic community where they support each other and strengthen each other in the faith.

“This is not only a school; it is a place of encounter. It is a place of reinforcement. The community is always present,” Blanco said.

The faithfulness of the school and the community around it has persevered despite big economic sacrifices.

In Spain, Catholic schools can be fully private, in which case the institution does not receive anything from the state, or grant-maintained, which means that the state provides economic help to the school through grants. In a country where secularization seems to be razing society, taking the grants has been the means of survival for many Catholic schools. Nonetheless, it all comes at a price: if the state is putting money in, the state has a say.

“A grant-maintained school probably requires less of an economic sacrifice—probably none because the paychecks of the teachers are granted by the state—but then we have to sacrifice our conscience,” Serra said. “This is the price we cannot pay.”

Most of the children at the school come from working families, so the tuition has remained lower than in most private schools and even lower than in many grant-maintained schools. Even with low tuition, many of the children pay even less or do not pay at all, depending on the needs of each household. For 40 years, the school has known only what it means to survive. Nonetheless, a few months ago, after looking into all the alternatives they could think of, the community realized that it was economically impossible to open for another school year.

“Right now, it is not easy for us to be given a grant, but we could fight for it. It is not easy because, after 40 years, we are very identifiable within the Department of Education; they know who we are. Nonetheless, we could get it and, with that, we would get rid of the problem. Yes, but we are not willing to pay that price,” Serra told LifeSite League.

Most parents have resisted the need to find another place for their children to go to school because they would not let their children be contaminated by evil ideologies.

“Public education is in the hands of people who want to destroy the innocence of our children. Everything that is gender ideology, nationalism, and all these ideologies is taught from very early; when they give a child back to you, they give them back an apostate,” Blanco explained to LifeSite League. “When you look at other Catholic schools, [‘Catholic’ is merely] a matter of nomenclature,” he said.

Some of the bravest families even said that they would homeschool, which in Spain means entering a gray area, legally speaking. In the Spanish Constitution, homeschooling is not prohibited, but the Law of Education forbids it. This means that even though a person would probably not end up in jail for homeschooling, families could experience pressure through fines or unwanted visits from social services. One decision that could help in avoiding this is enrolling the children in some sort of online homeschooling program, but the legal situation is not completely clear in this case either.

Through the initiative of the families, a fundraising campaign was launched, but the 8,000 euros collected were not enough to cover the expenses the school needs for the next academic year. A few weeks before the end of the school year, two donors providentially promised to take care of one of the education stages for one year, which in the U.S. would be equivalent to the grades K-1 to K-6. The school will thus be able to continue for one more year but will still not be financially able to keep kindergarten and grades K-7 to K-12 open. In this one year, they will need to find the funding to continue their labor.

The Missionaries of Christ the King and the families at the school are studying different paths to be able to ensure they will be able to keep educating children in the fullness of the Catholic faith.

“The school year ‘25–‘26 will be the big bet,” Serra told LifeSite League.

For Blanco and his family, the school is a treasure that cannot die.

“Many parents have the school, Inmaculado Corazón de María, as a counter-revolutionary reference,” he said.

“The school is a stronghold that allows us to preserve the innocence of our children. We ought not to confuse innocence with ignorance. We parents do explain to them what is going on in the world, but at its due time and with [any necessary] filters.”

Catalonia, especially Barcelona, now has very few practicing Catholics, and has been long threatened by the Enemy of mankind.  This is precisely one of the reasons why Alba was called to found this school in Barcelona from the very beginning.

“Sometimes he [Alba] used to tell us, ‘If this school were in Salamanca, we would have it full, and we would need to build another one’ so he was perfectly conscious of the place the school was located and of the need for us to be here,” Serra said. “He was very aware that it was necessary to do it here or that God wanted him to do it here. He felt a call to restore this land.”

Alba’s calling and the foundation of this school are intimately linked with the promise that the Sacred Heart made to Blessed Father Bernardo Hoyos in an apparition: “I will reign inSpain, and with more veneration than in many other places.”

Christ is King.

¡Viva Cristo Rey!

Lifefunder for CIM – Help this Spanish Catholic school to survive