Monsignor Víctor Manuel Fernández, currently Archbishop of La Plata, Argentina, will head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The new prefect has earned the nickname “the pope’s theologian” as he is believed to have helped draft some of his most important documents.
The office enforces the orthodoxy of the Church’s magisterium and sanctions theologians whom it considers to have deviated from the doctrine in their lectures or writings. In recent decades, the office has grown in importance for ordinary Catholics as the scandal of pedophile priests has spread around the world. One of the duties of the congregation is to evaluate and process allegations of clergy sexual abuse.
Fernández is believed to have been one of the main authors of some of Francis’ most influential documents, notably the 2016 exhortation Amoris laetitia (The Joy of Love), which opened the door to allowing divorced Catholics who become to marry in civil ceremonies and receive communion. The Catholic magisterium maintains that marriage is a sacrament and that remarried Catholics must live together as brothers and abstain from sexual relations in order to receive communion.
That prospect — longed for by divorced and remarried Catholics who deplore being separated from the Eucharist — would infuriate conservatives among the hierarchy and the faithful if it were codified in the magisterium.
The new prefect succeeds Cardinal Luis Ladaria, a Jesuit like Francisco, who took office in 2017 after the abrupt dismissal of the German conservative Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, who served a single term at the head of the doctrinal congregation. He had been appointed by Pope Benedict XVI, a favorite of the Catholic right.
Fernández, 60, will take office in mid-September, according to the Vatican announcement of his appointment.
He is a prolific writer and Bible expert who enjoys the support of Francis, who before he ascended the pontifical throne in 2013 was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Fernández has said that Archbishop Bergoglio supported his nomination for rector of the Argentine Catholic University when some detractors expressed concerns about some of his doctrinal positions.
FUENTE: Associated Press
