In 2010, the youngest Catholic bishop in Spain was officially appointed. Xavier Novell was 41 at the time he was ordained bishop for the Catholic Church in Spain.

With traditional views on abortion yet a soft stance on homosexuality, Novell became a controversial figure among laypeople and clergy. He is also considered a rising star, one of the few priests who continued practicing conversion therapy despite Christian denominations disapproving. He is also one of the few Catholic priests to continue carrying out an exorcism. 

In an erotic book published in 2016, Trilogia Amnesia, the author posed an amusing rhetoric, “What happens when attraction is stronger than any code of ethics or social pressure?”

In a spinning tale, one that would take the breath away from any hopeless romantic, Silvia Caballol, author of The Hell of Gabriel’s Lust and Trilogia Amnesia, met the answer to her question. Caballol met and came to know the dashing bishop while she was studying demonology. Novell drowned in a sea of infatuation.

The bishop fell so deeply in love; he abandoned the life he cultivated for decades. In a letter addressed to Novell and published in Religion Digital, a close acquaintance of the bishop recounted his conversation regarding his love interest. “I have fallen in love with a woman for the first time in my life, and I want to do things the right way,” the letter said, retelling Novell’s statement.

Caballo, a psychologist from Spain, writes erotic-themed books riddled with Satanic representation. Her publisher calls her dynamic and transgressive, someone who “turns upside down our ideas of morality and ethics.” Caballo invites her readers to journey “into sadism, madness and lust and a struggle between good and evil.”

Other clergies in Spain’s Catholic communities were not supportive of the couple, especially with Novell abandoning the sacrament of priesthood. One of the clergies claimed that demons possess Novell, with the pope challenging him to receive an exorcism.