Bishop quits church after falling in love with satanic erotica writer

This church official has chosen corsets over crucibles.

A Spanish bishop, known for supporting gay conversion therapy and performing exorcisms, has left the Roman Catholic Church after becoming smitten with a writer of Satanic erotic fiction, Silvia Caballol.

“I have fallen in love and want to do things properly,” said the now-ex-bishop, Xavier Novell, according to a report by BBC, which picked up the story from Spanish media outlets after the news of why Novell quit broke last month.

In addition to widespread media attention, the 52-year-old’s decision has also led to much internal criticism within the church. Some of his former colleagues told the Spanish media that they believed Novell to be possessed by demons. The situation is “not a problem of celibacy but rather of infestation,” one said, as reported by the National Post.

Before his scandalous resignation from the church, Novell was considered one of its rising stars, having become Spain’s youngest bishop in 2010 at the age of 41. His August departure reportedly shocked the religious community, although BBC reported that he had met multiple times with Vatican officials — even the Pope himself — ahead of his resignation.

Now in love but out of work, Novell is now looking for employment as a crop expert or agronomist in the Barcelona area, Religión Digital reported.

The woman he broke his vow of celibacy and commitment to Christ to be with, Silvia Caballol, is a divorced psychologist and erotic novelist whose titles include “The Hell of Gabriel’s Lust” and a trilogy called “Amnesia.” Caballol’s work has explored themes of madness, lust, sadism, God and Satan. Her publisher describes her as a “dynamic and transgressive author [who] turns upside down our ideas of morality and ethics,” according to the National Post. 

Novell has admitted in previous interviews that his infatuation with Caballol is not his first: Before becoming a man of God, he fell in love with and for a time wanted to marry and have children with an 18-year-old girl.