Pope Francis ‘tried to overcome’ clerical, ‘male chauvinist’ Church, Vatican official says

April 24, 2025

» Continue to this story on L'Osservatore Romano (Italian)

CWN Editor's Note: In an interview with the Vatican newspaper, Msgr. Piero Coda, the secretary general of the International Theological Commission, assessed Pope Francis’s theological legacy.

Pope Francis’s pontificate, said Msgr. Coda, represented a new stage of the implementation of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65):

Francis was the first Pope who did not participate in the Council’s work and therefore left behind all the questions related to its interpretation and assumed its essence in the most profound way, understanding that it was necessary to walk in the way indicated in it by the Holy Spirit.

In expanding the Synod of Bishops into a Synod that included laity and other non-bishops, the Pope “carries forward this reform by calling all of God’s people to gather, thus trying to overcome a figure of a clerical, unilaterally hierarchical, and male-chauvinist Church.”

The International Theological Commission, of which Msgr. Coda is secretary general, is an advisory body under the auspices of the Dicastery of the Doctrine for the Faith. Proposed at the 1967 Synod of Bishops, the commission was instituted by Pope St. Paul VI; its members are appointed by the Pontiff.

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• Posted by: feedback - Today 7:13 AM ET USA

  Quote: "reform by calling all of God’s people to gather..." Not true. Perhaps Francis wished to create this sort of impression but in reality he excluded anyone, clergy or laity, whom he considered "rigid."