Pope Francis has decided not to renew Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s term as prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), instead appointing Archbishop Luis Ladaria SJ, second in command at the CDF, as his successor.
Some commentators saw the move as a “papal smackdown” against a cardinal who had insisted that divorced and remarried Catholics could not be admitted to Communion unless they were living “as brother and sister”. Cardinal Müller said that Pope Francis’s document Amoris Laetitia had to be read in light of the teaching of the Church.
But Cardinal Müller told the German newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung that “There were no differences between me and Pope Francis” and that his five-year term had “run its course”.
The Vatican said in its announcement: “The Holy Father Francis thanked His Eminence Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller at the conclusion of his quinquennial mandate.” No new position was announced for Cardinal Müller, who at 69 is still more than five years away from the normal retirement age for a bishop.
Pope Francis had met Cardinal Müller the day before the announcement. Both the English-language Rorate Caeli blog and the Italian Corrispondenza Romana blog suggested he had been dismissed because of his stance on Communion for the remarried. Other bishops and bishops’ conferences read Amoris Laetitia as presenting a process of discernment that in certain circumstances could allow some remarried couples to return to the sacraments.
John Allen, writing for the Crux website, said there were several problems with the idea that the cardinal’s removal was part of an “ideological purge”.
He noted that Archbishop Ladaria had been appointed CDF secretary by Benedict XVI and had “always been seen as representing the Jesuits’ conservative wing”. His position on Communion for the remarried appears to be similar to Cardinal Müller’s, too. Allen quoted a letter the archbishop had written in 2014 in which he said: “A remarried divorcee cannot be validly absolved if he does not take the firm resolution of not ‘sinning for the future’ and therefore of abstaining from the acts proper to spouses, by doing in this sense all that is within his power.”
Allen added that there was a “lingering sense” among some observers that the Pope’s decision not to renew the cardinal’s term may “nevertheless still be personal” if not ideological, a “form of payback for [Cardinal] Müller’s affiliation with critics of the Pontiff, including contributing to a book with what turned out to be three of the four ‘dubia cardinals’ on the eve of the second synod of bishops on the family.”
The prefect of the doctrinal congregation is responsible for promoting the correct interpretation of Catholic doctrine and theology. His office is also responsible for conducting investigations of clergy accused of sexually abusing minors.
In a statement resigning from a papal commission on child protection, abuse survivor Marie Collins said members of the Roman Curia were reluctant to implement the commission’s recommendations. She cited Cardinal Müller in particular.
Speaking to reporters in May on his flight from Fatima, Portugal, to Rome, Pope Francis said that Ms Collins was “a little bit right” because of the slow pace of investigating so many cases of alleged abuse.
However, the Pope said the delays were due to the need to draft new legislation and to the fact that few people have been trained to investigate allegations of abuse. Cardinal Müller and Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, he added, were looking “for new people”.
As head of the doctrinal congregation, the prefect also serves as president of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the International Theological Commission and the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, which is responsible for the pastoral care of traditionalist Catholics and for reconciliation talks with the Society of St Pius X.
The new prefect, Archbishop Ladaria, was appointed congregation secretary in 2008 by Benedict XVI after having worked with him as a member of the International Theological Commission from 1992 to 1997, as a consultant to the doctrinal congregation from 1995 to 2008 and as secretary general of the theological commission from 2004.
Archbishop Ladaria was born in Manacor, Mallorca, on April 19, 1944, and earned a law degree at the University of Madrid before entering the Society of Jesus in 1966. He was ordained a priest in 1973.
He taught dogmatic theology at the Pontifical University Comillas in Madrid and later at the Gregorian. He served as vice rector of the university from 1986 to 1994.
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