A NATIONALIST MP has hit out at a Spanish cardinal who claimed Catholic supporters of independence movements anywhere in the world are violating the church's teachings.

Glasgow North West MP Carol Monaghan reacted angrily to remarks by Valencia's Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera after he said: “The independence movement has aroused a hatred which didn’t exist, whereas the church will always work for unity, coexistence and harmony.”

The leading churchman said it was “morally unacceptable” for nations to claim independence by their own will and against Catholic teaching ahead of regional elections in Catalonia on December 21.

The poll has been instigated following the dissolution of the Catalan Parliament following the unofficial independence poll that was in favour of the region being independent from Spain.

But Ms Monaghan, a Catholic and the MP for Glasgow North West, said that the cardinal showed a “deliberate ignorance of the drivers behind independence movements”.

She said in the Scottish Catholic Observer that as someone of Faith, it was “ludicrous” to suggest she was violating the Church through her belief that Scotland should be independent nation.

She added: "It appears the Spanish establishment have a new champion in Cardinal Cañizares.

“I wonder what the cardinal thinks about other nations that have gained their independence.

“He cannot surely believe that the USA or indeed Ireland should have remained under London rule?

“The cardinal’s comments display a deliberate ignorance of the drivers behind independence movements.”

“In Scotland these drivers include the desire for a more socially-just society, a society where refugees are welcome and nuclear weapons are not.

She went on: “As someone whose Faith has always informed my politics, it is ludicrous to suggest that I am violating Church teaching by asserting my belief that Scotland should be independent of the London-centric decision making in Westminster."

She described watching news of the "brutality" of the Spanish police sent into Catalonia on the day of the illegal independence referendum in October and said the Madrid Government had shown "intransigence."

Ms Monaghan argued that in this context his "suggestion that the independence movement had aroused hatred, is deeply irresponsible.”

In a commentary for the Madrid-based daily newspaper, La Razon, Cardinal Cañizares said: “In democratically constituted nations, there can be no moral legitimacy for unilateral secession.

“When certain nations are linked by historical, cultural and political ties to other nations within the same state, it cannot be said that these nations necessarily enjoy a right to political sovereignty.

“Nations, considered in isolation, do not enjoy an absolute right to decide.”

He said the Catholic Church recognised the right of people to change the political order, but said that it was “morally unacceptable” for nations to “claim independence unilaterally by their own will”.

He said nationalist demands could only be justified “with reference to the common good of the entire affected population”.

“When the will to independence becomes an absolute principle of political action and is imposed at all costs and by any means, it is comparable to an idolatry that gravely undermines the moral order,” he said.

In a separate interview with La Razon, Cardinal Cañizares said that he hoped the church would clarify the “non-legitimacy of secessionism in democratic countries” to discourage nationalism in other European regions such as Scotland, Corsica and Bavaria.