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Pope Francis appoints Argentine Archbishop Fernández as head of doctrine dicastery

Hannah Brockhaus By Hannah Brockhaus for CNA

July 1, 2023 Catholic News Agency The Dispatch 23 Print

Archbishop Victor Fernandez, who has been archbishop of La Plata, Argentina since 2018, talks with Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro, editor of La Civilta Cattolica, as they leave a session of the Synod of Bishops on the family at the Vatican Oct. 14, 2015. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Rome Newsroom, Jul 1, 2023 / 08:20 am (CNA).

Pope Francis has named Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, his longtime personal theologian and ghostwriter, to lead the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Argentine prelate succeeds Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, SJ, 79, who has been prefect of the dicastery since 2017.

Fernández, almost 61, will take up his new post in the middle of September, the Vatican said. The prolific writer has been archbishop of La Plata, Argentina, since 2018.

“As the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, I entrust to you a task that I consider very valuable,” Pope Francis wrote in a letter to Fernández, published July 1 with the announcement of his appointment.

The pope said the dicastery at times has promoted pursuing “doctrinal errors” over “promoting theological knowledge.”

“What I expect from you is certainly something very different,” Francis said. “I ask you as prefect to dedicate your personal commitment in a more direct way to the main purpose of the dicastery, which is ‘guarding the faith.’”

Fernández posted a photo of himself with Pope Francis on Twitter on June 30, the day before the announcement of his appointment as doctrine prefect.

He said he spent the week with the pope and called it “the new stage for Francis.”

“He works more hours than anyone else in the Vatican,” the archbishop wrote in Spanish. “Here he is seen tired after five hours with dense stuff, but after a siesta he was perfect and happy.”

Fernández is a controversial figure in the Church in Argentina, in part because of some of his past publications. The theologian has published more than 300 articles and books.

Pope Francis, who has known Fernández for decades, reportedly entrusted him with drafting his first apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, a text in which the archbishop cited his own prior scholarship as a source document.

The archbishop was also reputedly involved in the drafting of Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis’ 2016 apostolic exhortation on love in the family, which followed the Church’s two synods on the family.

Fernández was heavily involved in both synods on the family in 2014 and 2015 and was on the commission for the writing of the 2015 synod’s final report.

Quoting his apostolic exhortations Evangelii Gaudium and Gaudete et Exsultate, Pope Francis wrote that Fernández’s task as the new head of the Vatican’s doctrine office “should express that the Church ‘encourages the charism of theologians and their theological research efforts’ as long as ‘they are not content with a desk theology,’ with ‘a cold, hard logic that seeks to dominate everything.’ It will always be true that reality is superior to the idea.”

Fernández was born in 1962 in the small rural town of Alcira, in the Province of Córdoba. He was ordained a priest in August 1986 in Río Cuarto, a mostly rural diocese. In 1988 he obtained a degree in theology with a biblical specialization at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and then obtained a doctorate in theology at the UCA in 1990. He was pastor of Santa Teresita in Río Cuarto (Córdoba) from 1993 to 2000 and was founder and director of the Jesús Buen Pastor Lay Formation Institute and Teacher Training Center in the same city.

In the early 1990s, he moved to Buenos Aires, where he was appointed a consultor to several commissions within the Argentinean bishops’ conference and the Latin American Bishops Council (CELAM).

Having shown a great capacity for writing, Fernández was brought by then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as an expert to the Fifth General Conference of the Latin American Bishops, held in 2007 at the Brazilian Marian shrine of Aparecida.

Aparecida, many sources have claimed, solidified the relationship between the future pope and the theologian.

From 2008 to 2009, he was dean of the faculty of theology of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina and president of the Argentine Theological Society.

On Dec. 15, 2009, Cardinal Bergoglio appointed Fernández as rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina. However, Fernández was not able to take the oath of office until May 20, 2011, after he had answered objections to his appointment raised by Vatican officials who expressed concerns about the orthodoxy of certain elements of his scholarship.

An avid writer, by the time Fernández was chosen by Bergoglio as the UCA rector, he had written hundreds of articles and books, including, “Incarnated Spiritual Theology” (2004), a book that was featured in the Argentinean soap opera “Esperanza Mía,” about an illicit love affair between a priest and a nun.

The book commonly regarded as his most unusual is the 1995 work “Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing.” Regarding the book, Fernández explained that “in these pages I want to synthesize the popular feeling, what people feel when they think of a kiss, what they experience when they kiss … So, trying to synthesize the immense richness of life, these pages emerged in favor of kissing. I hope that they help you kiss better, that they motivate you to release the best of yourself in a kiss.”

The book has disappeared from most official lists of Fernández’s works.

Pope Francis appointed Fernández the titular Archbishop of Tiburnia on May 13, 2013, thus making him the first rector of UCA to become an archbishop.

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Pope Francis celebrates All Souls’ Day Mass in Rome catacombs

November 2, 2019 CNA Daily News 0

Rome, Italy, Nov 2, 2019 / 10:38 am (CNA).- Pope Francis celebrated Mass Saturday for the souls of the dead in Rome’s Catacombs of Priscilla, saying the place of a Christian is in the safety of the hands of God, whatever the outside circumstances might be.

“The souls of the just are in the hands of God, the hands of God, which are wounded…” he said Nov. 2.

“The place of the Christian,” he continued, “is in the intercession of Jesus before the Father. In the hands of God. And we are safe. Whatever happens, happens – it is the cross. In this identity we are blessed. If they persecute us, if they say anything against us, if we are in the hands of God, [which are] wounded by love, we are safe. This is our place.”

“Where am I most safe? In the hands of God or with other things, other securities?” he asked.

The Catacombs of Priscilla were one of the prominent catacombs of the early Church in Rome and is referred to in early Christian texts as “regina catacumbarum,” meaning “the queen of the catacombs” because of the many martyrs who were buried there.

The catacombs were lost for several hundred years, after the entrances were blocked to keep out thieves. They were rediscovered in the 16th-century, though many of the remains of the martyrs were subsequently removed.

In his homily at Mass, Pope Francis said the martyrs of the Church in the first centuries, those who came to the catacombs to celebrate the Eucharist in safety, many of whom were killed for the faith, have the same identity as the many Christians who are persecuted around the world today.

“Also today there are Christians who are persecuted, more than in the first centuries, more,” he said.

He told the story of an Albanian religious sister who was imprisoned in a re-education camp during Communism, who would baptize children in secret, because the priests were forbidden from giving sacraments. There were no cups, so the sister used a shoe with river water to baptize the children, he said.

In his homily, Pope Francis also reflected on the beatitudes as the identity of a Christian. “There is no other [identity],” he said. “If you do this, if you live like this, you are a Christian.”

Belonging to a Catholic movement or group is valid too, he said, but “your identity card” is the beatitudes. “If you do not have this, movements, memberships serve no purpose.”

“Either you live like this or you are not a Christian,” he said, adding that “without this, there is no identity. there is a pretense of being a Christian, but no identity.”

The pope noted that it was his first time ever visiting the catacombs. After Mass, upon returning to the Vatican, he visited the crypt of St. Peter’s Basilica to spend a moment in prayer for the souls of the deceased popes who are buried there.

It had recently been tradition for popes to say Mass for All Souls’ Day at Rome’s Campo Verano cemetery, founded in the 19th century.

Pope Francis did the same for the first three years of his pontificate, though in 2016 he chose to say the All Souls’ Day Mass at Rome’s Prima Porta Cemetery instead.

In 2017, he celebrated the feast day Mass in the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial in Nettuno, an Italian cemetery for American personnel killed in World War II.

Dedicated in 1956, the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery covers 77 acres, with 7,860 servicemen buried there. A chapel on the grounds holds the names of an additional 3,095 servicemen who went missing in action.

Last year, the pope said Mass in a cemetery for deceased children and unborn babies called the “Garden of Angels,” located in the Laurentino Cemetery on the outskirts of Rome.

 

[…]

The Dispatch

Vatican document on human dignity condemns gender transition, surrogacy, abortion

April 8, 2024 Catholic News Agency 9
Dome of St. Peter’s basilica, Vatican City. / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 8, 2024 / 09:15 am (CNA).

The Vatican’s top doctrinal office issued a declaration on the theme of human dignity on Monday that addresses growing concerns such as gender theory, sex changes, surrogacy, and euthanasia in addition to abortion, poverty, human trafficking, and war.

“In the face of so many violations of human dignity that seriously threaten the future of the human family, the Church encourages the promotion of the dignity of every human person, regardless of their physical, mental, cultural, social, and religious characteristics,” reads the Vatican declaration issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. 

The declaration, titled Dignitas Infinita, which means “infinite dignity,” states that the Church highlights these concerns “with hope, confident of the power that flows from the risen Christ, who has fully revealed the integral dignity of every man and woman.”

Abortion, euthanasia, and surrogacy

In the declaration, the dicastery cautions against threats to human dignity that begin at the moment of conception, that exist in the process of procreation, and that threaten humanity toward the end of life.

The declaration cites St. John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae on abortion, noting that the pontiff taught that “procured abortion is the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means it is carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth.”

According to Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, also cited in the declaration, preborn children are “the most defenseless and innocent among us” and in the present day, “efforts are made to deny them their human dignity and to do with them whatever one pleases, taking their lives and passing laws preventing anyone from standing in the way of this.”

The declaration also warns that euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are “swiftly gaining ground” in some parts of the world, which it says is “unique in how it utilizes a mistaken understanding of human dignity to turn the concept of dignity against life itself.”

“Even in its sorrowful state, human life carries a dignity that must always be upheld, that can never be lost, and that calls for unconditional respect,” the declaration states. “Indeed, there are no circumstances under which human life would cease from being dignified and could, as a result, be put to an end.”

The practice of surrogacy is another concern noted by the document, noting that “the immensely worthy child becomes a mere object” in the process.

“Because of this unalienable dignity, the child has the right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin and to receive the gift of a life that manifests both the dignity of the giver and that of the receiver,” the declaration adds. 

“Moreover, acknowledging the dignity of the human person also entails recognizing every dimension of the dignity of the conjugal union and of human procreation. Considering this, the legitimate desire to have a child cannot be transformed into a ‘right to a child’ that fails to respect the dignity of that child as the recipient of the gift of life.” 

Gender theory and sex changes

As many Western nations continue to promote gender ideology and debate whether minors should be able to access transgender drugs and surgeries, the Vatican states that the ideology “intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.” 

The declaration emphasizes that “all attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected” and that “only by acknowledging and accepting this difference in reciprocity can each person fully discover themselves, their dignity, and their identity.”

A human body, the Vatican notes, also shares in the dignity of the image of God, and people are called to accept and respect the body as it was created: “the body participates in that dignity as it is endowed with personal meanings, particularly in its sexed condition.” 

“Any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception,” the Vatican adds. 

To respect human dignity, the declaration also condemns unjust discrimination, aggression, and violence directed toward individuals based on sexual orientation. 

“It should be denounced as contrary to human dignity the fact that, in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation,” the Vatican states.

[…]

23 Comments

  1. I am pretty sure our priest has just lost it. I mean, he was on the fence anyway, but the homily he gave on St. Peter and Paul, just oy vey! He sounded like my very non-Catholic, dad telling me that the Pope was the Bishop of Rome and really ought to keep his nose on his own diocese and not the rest of Christendom. And sadly, I can no longer say either my father or my priest are wrong.

    Reply

  2. The appointment of soon to be Cardinal Fernandez will complete the Amoris Letitia heteropraxy revolution of the Sola Misericordia heresy. St. Athanasius pray for us to stand firm as this category 5 storm of Faith seeks to destroy the Catechism. St. Iraneaus, pray that we might obey God’s Commandments as we are gutted of His Deposit of Faith/Truth. St. Francis, may your humble example lead us away from all error. St. Catherine, pray we resist the temptation to schism. St. John Paul II, pray that we have joy in effort to hold fast to the Veritatis Splendor revealed by Jesus Christ. God’s peace be with us.

    Reply

  3. Why doesn’t he just drop the pretenses already and gather all the world’s atheists and anti-Catholics and appoint them to all positions of power.

    Reply

  4. Bishops, are…you…ready to synodal? Tucho and Francis made concubinage admissible and the death penalty inadmissible. Learn to speak up brothers, or kiss the Catechism goodbye. The worst they can do is give you less duties. It’s not like imperial troops will hunt you down. Face them before you face God.

    Reply

  5. We read: “The pope said the dicastery at times has promoted pursuing ‘doctrinal errors’ over ‘promoting theological knowledge.’” And, “…It will always be true that reality is superior to the idea.”

    Cognitive dissonance over here, the notion that theological reflection overturns rather than deepening doctrine (vs Vincent of Lerins, and Cardinal Newman’s “Development of Christian Doctine”) already discerned within the indwelling Holy Spirit, and now mysteriously that doctrine about reality is less real than, say, ambulatory synodal ideas.

    As a member of disposal culture’s possibly sidelined living Tradition of the Church–that is, the now peripheralized/perennial Church–yours truly hopes to benefit from Fernandez’s celebrated skill in “harmonizing,” I mean clarifying (!) apparent contradictions and these apparent conjunctions. Specifically, and for example, since Veritatis Splendor and human nature/natural law and moral absolutes (1993) are now, in reality, explicit elements of the Magisterium:

    “This is the first time, in fact, that the Magisterium of the Church [!] has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of this [‘moral’] teaching, and presented the principles [!] for the pastoral discernment necessary in practical and cultural situations which are complex and even crucial” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 115).

    But, speaking theologically or humbly, who am I to judge? Or to simply notice, or to simply observe, or whatever? together with the irreducible Veritatis Splendor, am I not part of synodality’s sensus fidelium?

    Reply

  6. Wake up. people! This is a clarion call to modernism, apostasy, and heresy by Bergoglio, Fernandez, and the rest of the demonic homo-heretical Vatican Mercy Mob. Do not turn away from recognizing that the installation of a perverted Judas as head of the CDF comes as the Synod of Sin approaches its final stage. Resistance is no longer a hypothetical option but an unavoidable necessity.

    Reply

  8. The top Vatican doctrinal official a guy whose orthodoxy was previously questioned, who wrote a book that became the screenplay for an Argentina soap opera and a book about the art of kissing! (where he got the experience to write that one—don’t even want o go there).

    Worrisome as so much of this pontificate has been.

    St JP II pray for us.

    Reply

  9. That any bishop-or theologian would actually spend time writing a book on how to “kiss better” well- one cannot help but wonder what sort of nonsense this is?– Why would a bishop be focused on such a topic unless he is probing the “lie” of the kiss of Judas, contrary to an authentic theology of the body– but this doesn’t seem to have been the case. Fernandez’s focus on such a topic is quite peculiar in the least–and interesting that this book no longer appears on his list of publications. In addition– Francis wants reality to have the priority over ideas– OK– but again what does the Holy Father mean by “reality”? One hopes he doesn’t mean that one’s personal, subjective lived situation determines ethics. In Catholicism– according to the Revelation of God, truth and the idea are one thing. see my article on the key to the Francis pontificate: https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/amoris-laetitia-the-key-to-the-francis-pontificate:

    Reply

    • I read your article, which is excellent, but I believe it’s overly generous in charity towards the unbalanced understanding of mercy in the mind of Francis. Anyone who fails to understand that mercy is built into moral absolutes, which he trivializes as “ideals” at best, rigid obsessions at worst, is little different than the simplistic sophistry of progressive moral theologians of the six decades post VII who have shown a preference for seeing the imperatives of moral thought as identifying imaginary goods as the sole moral object while remaining oblivious to the damages. There is no way of reading AL without concluding that Francis has no basis for identifying any fault with a man who abandons his family, mercilessly sending his broken wife and children to field hospitals that don’t exist in Francis’ selective mercyland, to run away with his mistress. Mercy is already built into absolutes because God knows that self-deception is the most common of human experiences, right up there with breathing.

      Reply

  10. Yesterday’s morning’s news of the appointment of Victor Fernandez to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has, very honestly, shaken me. Knowing full well the upcoming synod will be a cataclysm we can now be assured that its predetermined conclusions will be fast tracked by Tucho. Talk about betrayal with a kiss…
    The fact that Fernandez’s bibliography has been shaved down to omit his infamous title is perfectly characteristic of the operation in place since March 2013. Are we allowed to resent being played fools by ecclesiastics subsumed in hubris? Perhaps we have become accustomed to it? Let us not forget those words of guidance by Pope Francis to Archbishop Forte in regard to Tucho’s other sterling work “Amoris Laetitia” in regard to communion for the divorced and remarried without benefit of a canonical annulment – “…not too directly or it will make a mess. We’ll clarify it later…” All in conformity to that forceful admonition to youth back in 2013, “¡Hagan lío!”
    We observe a pontificate of shameless craft. It sadly gives proper credence to the term “Jesuitical” and it breaks our hearts.
    Matthew 16:23 comes to mind…

    Reply

    • Remember: Christendom once awoke and found itself Arian.
      .
      The truth will out; it may not be in our lifetime. Or our children’s or grandchildren’s, but the Truth will out.

      Reply

      • That’s sound Christian, peace-making counsel, dear Mrs. Hess.

        Provided that we are not now entering the last decade before The Grand Finale, as some are predicting.

        Jesus warned us to be always ready for His return and it may be that this includes making a public and costly stand for the truth taught to us in The New Testament, no matter how eminent and numerous the betrayers of truth might be.

        Ever in the merciful love of King Jesus Christ; blessings from marty

        Reply

  11. “Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing”??????

    This has *got* to be a reprint of a Babylon Bee article.

    Reply

  12. In another short piece that appeared at CWR a couple of days ago, Cardinal Sarah suggested five ways for dealing with the crisis of faith in the world and the church. Silence was one of them. He didn’t recommend any kind of open resistance to the ongoing all-out war on the Church being waged by Francis and his supporters. That is the greatest failing of the conservative half of the hierarchy. Incredibly, as the offenses have increased in frequency and intensity, the opposition, which was sporadic and muted at its height, has almost completely disappeared. Does anyone in a position of authority even care anymore?

    Reply

    • You’ve hit the nail on the head. Obedience to tyranny and error is a sacrilege. There are a fair number of faithful ecclesiastics hiding behind the convenience of a misconception of evangelical obedience.
      It is ten years beyond time to call the wizard out. I’m praying that those with far more experience in court politics know when the time to strike is — but will any of the wise voices be around when Tucho and Bergoglio are unwrapping the claptrap of the Synod? I hear the nomenclature of the the episcopate these days is “wait and age them out.”
      The ecclesiastical sandbox is a scandal of the magnitude I can’t believe. Having inhabited monastic life for a time I thought I had seen everything.
      Nope.

      Reply

  13. Am glad so many other sound Catholics can see that ‘the Emperor has no clothes’. Pope Francis appears entirely spiritually naked in this letter to Arch. Fernandez.

    The Pope’s theological spin-tailors have so mesmerized him that his letter is entirely self-referential. No single stitch of clothing apparent; nothing at all woven by the saving words & life-example of Our Lord Jesus Christ, that is so richly ours in the writings of the 9 apostolic authors of the 27 texts of The New Testament: the godly clothing of 2 millennia of Catholicism. In this letter, Pope Francis is WILFUL NUDE, whilst fantasizing that he is wearing uniquely fashionable new clothes.

    (Please recall, dear Pope Francis, the sumptuously clothed Catechism of the Catholic Church, robed with over 3,500 citations from The New Testament).

    It seems that, tragically, The Holy Father has come to the point of spurning the tenets of faith we have all believed in and lived by as: “a cold and harsh logic that seeks to dominate everything”. The consensus response in the comments here asks: “Who is it who is trying to dominate whom . . ?”

    Un-spin this letter and our current pope writes that: “Under my new theology, obdurately unrepentant offenders against the teachings of Christ are now to find a warm welcome among the faithful!” That is, rather than unrepentant sinners being mercifully taught The Gospel Truth & being lovingly invited to REPENT and be saved, and so, dressed in the same obedient garment as the rest of us non-rebel Catholics.

    Did anyone ever imagine we’d live to see a pope organize an anti-Apostolic rebellion?

    Keep praying everyone!

    Ever in the JOY of obedience to Jesus Christ; love & blessings from marty

    Reply

  14. Those of you who recall the reference to ghostwriting, and those who would like a review of the allegation of ghostwriter plagiarism, may find this posting by Father Z helpful:

    New Prefect of DOCTRINE

    Those of you who are worried about irreversible damage to the Catholic faith by this latest appointment may find this reassuring:

    Francis’s Efforts to Remake the Church in His Image Are Doomed to Failure

    Excerpt:

    “This means that Francis’s Church puts great emphasis on its most off-putting element– blind devotion to the Pope and bishops– even as it strips away the Church’s own history, tradition, and teaching. Meanwhile, traditional Catholicism continues to grow and evangelize. In this climate, we will see the orthodox practice of the Catholic faith continue, but with a growing distance from the hierarchy– especially the hierarchy in Rome. In 50 years, will anyone be reading Francis’s encyclicals? Fernandez’s books? Will Roche have any continuing influence on the liturgy?”

    I have a recurring dream in which a future pope collects the documents of his miserable unorthodox predecessor(s) and proceeds to enact in St. Peter’s Square a ceremonial burning of all of them, inspired by the famous scene at the opening of “Gladiator”.

    The MSM, here represented by the Associated Press and MSN, are not impressed with the appointment:

    Bishop named to Vatican office handling sex abuse complaints discounted some victims, US group says

    Reply

  16. This is the most unbelievable story I have ever seen on CWR.

    Seriously.

    Whether Archbishop Fernández’s job is going to be “pursuing doctrinal errors,” “promoting theological knowledge,” or “guarding the faith,” is immaterial.

    The simple fact is, I am eminently more qualified than he is for the job.

    And I do not say that lightly.

    Now, it’s not because of my raffish good looks, or my English major, or my extensive background in marketing, or even my three marriages.

    But simply because I did *not* write “Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing”.

    This appointment is the big red nose on the clown car that is the Bergoglian papacy.

    (Attn. Mr. Weigel, feel free to use that last sentence in one of your upcoming works on this peculiar chapter in the history of the Church. No attribution necessary.)

    (You’re welcome.)

    Reply

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