Pope Francis Places Controversial Argentinean Bishop as New Head of Discipline and Doctrine – Monsignor Fernández Wrote Book About the ‘Art of Kissing’, and Is Accused of Covering up Sexual Abuse Allegations in His Archdiocese
By Paul Serran Jul. 3, 2023
Associated Press reported:
“Pope Francis on Saturday chose a bishop who is a trusted theological advisor from his native Argentina for one of the Vatican’s most powerful positions — head of the watchdog office that ensures doctrinal orthodoxy.
Francis named Monsignor Victor Manuel Fernández, the archbishop of La Plata, Argentina, as the prefect, or chief, of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.”
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), is the successor of the Inquisition. It’s a powerful post, that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger held by two decades, before he became Pope Benedict, in 2005.
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“The Dicastery, or department, enforces orthodoxy of church teaching and disciplines theologians deemed to have strayed from Catholic doctrine in their lectures or publications. But it has taken on considerably more importance to rank-and-file faithful as the stain of pedophile priests spread across the globe in recent decades. Among the department’s duties are evaluating and processing sex abuse allegations against clergy.”
Fernández, believed to have ‘ghost-written’ some of Francis’ most important documents, is set to take up his new post in mid-September. Meanwhile, protests are arising.
BishopAccountability.org, a Massachusetts organization that maintains an online archive of abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, is sounding the alarm.
ABC News reported:
“A U.S.-based group that tracks how the Catholic hierarchy deals with allegations of sexual abuse by clergy says Pope Francis made a ‘troubling’ choice in appointing an Argentine prelate to a powerful Vatican office that handles such cases.”
In 2019, Fernández ‘refused to believe’ victims who accused a priest in the La Plata archdiocese of sexually abusing boys, and disregarded the accusations.
That is disturbing, for a bishop set to have the responsibility of judging and punishing priests who abuse children.
“Francis ‘made a baffling and troubling choice’, the group said in statement emailed late Saturday in the U.S., citing how Fernández handled the case.
‘In his response to allegations, he stoutly supported the accused priest and refused to believe the victims’, BishopAccountability.org said. Fernández ‘should have been investigated, not promoted to one of the highest posts in the global church’.”
And the criticism also comes from inside the church, as many conservative catholic have reservations about his theological work and his adherence to the orthodoxy he is to defend.
Catholic news site The Pillar reported:
“Fernández is the author of more than 300 theological works, including the 1995 ‘Heal me with your mouth. The art of kissing’, which was not included on the list of his publications released July 1 by the Vatican.
The Holy See press office said that the archbishop’s writings were marked by ‘a significant biblical basis and a constant effort to create a dialogue between theology and culture, evangelizing mission, spirituality, and social issues’.”
That a book like that is inappropriate for a man in his position is half-admitted by Fernández himself in the first paragraph of his book: “I want to clarify that this book was not written so much based on my own experience, but based on the lives of people who kiss. In these pages I want to synthesize the popular feeling, what people feel when they think of a kiss, what mortals experience when they kiss.”
