An image of Mary holding Jesus after his death on the cross One of Spain’s most famous churches does not belong to the Catholic Church, local authorities have ruled. According to a report from Córdoba city council’s secretary general, Valeriano Lavela, the city’s mosque-cathedral, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption, the ownership of which the diocese of Córdoba paid €30 to register in 2006, is not the property of the Church or any other individual or organisation.
Since 1984 the site been a UNESCO world heritage site “of exceptional universal value”, which therefore cannot be owned by anyone, the report says, stressing that in any case the Church’s acquisition has no legal basis and cannot confer ownership. “Religious consecration is not the way to acquire property”, the report says.
The cathedral, built as a mosque in the late 8th Century on the site of an earlier Christian church, has been a church since the 13th Century.