Most Catholics have little sense of the liberal archbishop behind the Vatican’s pronouncements. But critics of the pope see Víctor Manuel Fernández as Enemy No. 2.
VATICAN CITY — When Pope Francis first asked if he would be willing to take one of the loftiest jobs at the Vatican, heading the office that sets the policies of the Roman Catholic Church, Víctor Manuel Fernández said no.
“I think Pope Francis felt himself now freer to realize his ideas,” said Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, an ally of Benedict who ran the dicastery from 2012 to 2017. “And therefore, he asked Fernández to come his side, and to promote this program, this agenda.”Not all of Fernández’s work has come off as “liberal.” LGBTQ+ activists were taken aback in April when he unveiled a document, also signed by the pope, that said “sex-change intervention” threatened “.
In one previously undisclosed incident, Fernández went to the pope over concerns he was being surveilled, according to a person familiar with the events who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential Vatican matters. In retrospect, Fernández said, the books reflected less maturity than he would have liked, but he maintained the topics should not be off-limits in spiritual discourse: “I don’t have any shame of the subjects,” he said. “If I had to write them today, they would be richer and more complete.”The campaign against Fernández, and by default, against the pope, has also revived old claims that the Argentine cardinal long served as Francis’s secret “ghost writer” on important papal documents.
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