"Pope appoints longtime ally and ghostwriter of Amoris Laetitia as new Vatican doctrine chief"

"Pope Francis has appointed the highly controversial Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández of La Plata as new Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (now Dicastery), with the new prefect known for his roles as the Pope’s longtime friend and theologian and ghostwriter of numerous papal texts including Amoris Laetitia...

Fernández will now assume his new role as head of the Church’s doctrinal office in mid-September. With Fernández in position at the head of the CDF, his roster includes, as expanded upon in the article below:

Ardent promotion and defense of Amoris Laetitia opening the door to Communion for the divorced and 'remarried.'
Public promotion of erotic kissing and actions.
Downplaying of need to oppose same-sex marriage.
Stating how he is more progressive than the Pope on certain issues.

Fernández’s career has long been guided by Francis, both before and after Francis’ ascent to the papal throne. This intimate link has only grown since March 13, 2013, with Fernández now being widely acknowledged as Francis’ 'primary ghostwriter' and 'trusted theologian.'

This includes his ghostwriting of Evangelii Gaudium, Laudato Sí, and the highly controversial Amoris Laetitia.

His role in writing Amoris Laetitia should not be unexpected: indeed, Pope Francis had given Fernández key roles in the running of the 2014 and 2015 Vatican synods, which led to the controversial apostolic exhortation.

Amoris Laetitia’s now infamous Chapter 8 opened the door to allowing the divorced and 'remarried' access to receive Holy Communion. Francis soon responded to questions by saying there is 'no other interpretation' of Amoris Laetitia except the one provided by the bishops of Buenos Aires allowing Communion for the divorced and remarried.

Francis was subsequently also asked if Amoris Laetitia contained a 'change in discipline that governs access to the sacraments' for Catholics who are divorced and 'remarried.' He replied, 'I can say yes, period.' Within months, a group of Catholic scholars issued a letter to all the cardinals and patriarchs, warning that Amoris Laetitia contained 'dangers to the faith.'

Fernández is believed to be chiefly responsible for the lines that have led to so much consternation among faithful Catholics. So much so that veteran Vatican journalist Sandro Magister highlighted how the most controversial passages of text were in fact very closely mirroring Fernández’s own writings from his years in Argentina.

In his personal defense of the apostolic exhortation, Fernández argued that:

It is also licit to ask if acts of living together more uxorio [i.e. having sexual relations] should always fall, in its integral meaning, within the negative precept of ‘fornication’ … there can be a path of discernment open to the possibility of receiving the food of the Eucharist … I say, ‘in its integral meaning,’ because one cannot maintain those acts in each and every case are gravely dishonest in a subjective sense.

Francis’ 'great innovation is to allow for a pastoral discernment in the realm of the internal forum to have practical consequences in the manner of applying the discipline,' Fernández wrote.

Issuing a letter of welcome to the incoming CDF prefect, Pope Francis hailed him as 'brother,' writing the CDF’s 'central purpose is to guard the teaching that flows from the faith in order to ‘give a reason for our hope, but not as enemies who point out and condemn.’'

Victor Fernández with Francis June 2023

In 2015, Fernández praised Pope Francis’ pontificate, arguing that 'No, there’s no turning back' from his course of actions. 'For example, the Pope is convinced that the things he’s already written or said cannot be condemned as an error. Therefore, in the future anyone can repeat those things without fear of being sanctioned,' he stated.

Separately, Fernández said:

The Pope goes slow because he wants to be sure that the changes have a deep impact. The slow pace is necessary to ensure the effectiveness of the changes … You have to realize that he is aiming at reform that is irreversible. If one day he should sense that he’s running out of time and doesn’t have enough time to do what the Spirit is asking him, you can be sure he will speed up.'

Fernández has even openly stated how 'in many issues I am far more progressive than the Pope.'...

Over its many stages so far, the Synod on Synodality has been consistent in its push for a need to 'welcome' the 'remarried divorcees, people in polygamous marriages, LGBTQ+ people.' Now, its latest document promotes the anti-Catholic teaching of Amoris Laetitia in allowing the divorced and 'remarried' to receive Communion at the time when that document’s author will assume one of the highest offices in the Catholic Church, as head of the Church’s doctrinal office.

Furthermore, a key Vatican cardinal revealed some weeks ago that the Vatican is in the stages of drafting a document on the divorced and 'remarried' in line with the wishes of Pope Francis. Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life, stated in April how 'the dicastery is working on the preparation of a text specifically regarding – as you wished, Holiness – men and women who, having marriage failure behind them, live in new unions.'

Farrell has also been a consistent and ardent promoter of Amoris Laetitia, stating how 'I firmly believe [Amoris Laetitia] is the teaching of the Church. This is a pastoral document telling us how we should proceed. I believe we should take it as it is.'...

While the Vatican listed numerous books and written works of Fernández’s, notably missing from the list was his 1995 work 'Heal me with your mouth: The art of kissing.' Defending the book, Fernández stated 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.

et as LifeSite reported previously, while Fernández defended the book as an analysis of kissing that purports to be a spiritual and theological work, it is unmistakably erotic and often suggestive of ambiguous sexual relationships in which the genders of the participants are unspecified. The book also contains various photos of statues and artworks depicting people passionately kissing and embracing one another in intimate and erotic positions.

In addition to erotic poetry and verse about kissing, the book contains advice on how to make one’s body more attractive to another when engaging in an intimate kiss.

Fernández’s heterodox views are not limited to promoting of explicit literature, however. He is on public record as downplaying the need to oppose same-sex 'marriage'."