Archbishop Fernández offers critical assessment of Veritatis Splendor, denies errors in handling abuse allegations

July 18, 2023

Cardinal-designate Víctor Manuel Fernández, the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, offered a critical assessment of Veritatis Splendor [The Splendor of Truth], Pope St. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical on certain fundamental questions of the Church’s moral teaching.

“Veritatis Splendor is a great document, powerfully solid,” Archbishop Fernández said in an interview with The Pillar. “Obviously, it denotes a particular concern—to set certain limits. For this reason it is not the most adequate text to encourage the development of theology.”

The new prefect added:

In fact, over the last decades, tell me how many theologians can we name with the stature of Rahner, Ratzinger, Congar or Von Balthasar? Not even that which they call “liberation theology” has theologians at the level of Gustavo Gutiérrez.

Something has gone wrong. There were controls, not so much development. Today perhaps a text will be needed that, collecting everything valuable from Veritatis Splendor, has another style, another tone, which at the same time allows for encouraging the growth of Catholic theology, as Pope Francis asks of me.

Cardinal-designate Fernández, the archbishop of La Plata (Argentina) from 2018 until his appointment as prefect on July 1, also denied he made errors in addressing abuse allegations against Father Eduardo Lorenzo, a diocesan priest.

In a letter published by the La Plata-based El Dia in February 2019, Archbishop Fernández questioned the motives of parents and others who had raised concerns about Father Lorenzo, who had been accused of abuse in 2008. The local prosecutor had determined at the time that there was insufficient evidence to press charges against Father Lorenzo; still, parents raised concerns a decade later about the priest’s appointment as pastor of a parish with a school.

In July 2019, Archbishop Fernández learned of two new abuse allegations against Father Lorenzo. Despite the new allegations, Archbishop Fernández permitted Father Lorenzo to remain as pastor of his parish for an additional four months, until November 2019, when the priest took a leave of absence, according to a timeline of the case published by BishopAccountability.org, which hosts the largest public collection of information on the clergy abuse crisis. Earlier this month, Juan Pablo Gallego, the attorney for the victims, told the Associated Press that Archbishop Fernández “worked quickly” to “interfere in the judicial investigation” into the allegations against Lorenzo, who committed suicide in December 2019.

Addressing a question from The Pillar about his handling of the allegations, Cardinal-designate Fernández said:

To be precise, in a case from La Plata I did not admit “errors,” because I followed the procedures that were in force at that time, and always in consultation with the dicastery. What I admitted is having acted “insufficiently.”

I could have done more, I could have taken the most drastic measures more quickly. In any case, you also learn from your own experience. Today we have better procedures than at that time and that makes things easier.

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Show 3 Comments? (Hidden)Hide Comments

• Posted by: edlord4161 - Jul. 18, 2023 9:21 PM ET USA

  Cardinal-designate Víctor Manuel Fernández hasn’t a clue.As then Cardinal Ratzinger said at the funeral of Pope St John Paul the Great “ He Roused Us From a Lethargic Faith”. Pope St. John Paul the Great was one of the greatest theologians and philosophers in the history of the Faith. He taught the Faith as Our Lord and Saviour did, through, word and example. He not the incumbent was a unifier and leader that brought the Church into the new millennium wholeheartedly.

• Posted by: ewaughok - Jul. 18, 2023 6:50 PM ET USA

  Cardinal-designate Fernandez is correct: “Something has gone wrong.” it’s the ill-informed idea that theology must always progress like a line of dominoes … Any study of the history of theology, even a superficial one, refutes this idea … Fernandez simply wants to manipulate doctrine so it suits his modernist predilections!

• Posted by: Randal Mandock - Jul. 18, 2023 6:26 PM ET USA

  The interview is peppered with "inclusive" language. Does this cardinal-designate actually talk that way, or did the translators use artistic license? Precision does not seem to be a strong point among many of Pope Francis' appointments to high office. The cardinal-designate, like Francis, seems to be stuck on change, which they refer to as "growth" in theology. Ecclesiastical Latin is used as the language of the Church partly because it does not change. How much "growth" is actually needed?