by Caminante Wanderer
Argentina, June 5, 2025
I have the impression, reading what is published in X, that the progressives began a few days ago to lower the level of enthusiasm with which they had received him. Elisabetta Piqué, the correspondent of La Nación in Rome [Rorate: and a great friend and confidante of Francis], should have already resigned her position in embarrassment because she never tired of speaking of “absolute continuity” with the pontificate of Francis and, up to now, such continuity has been, as was foreseeable, of a nominal nature. The recalcitrant traditionalists, for their part, look with derision at the conservatives (I would also be included in that group) because, they say, Prevost deceived us by putting on a red mozetta and with that we are already satisfied. But they, shrewd and profound theologians, know perfectly well that it is nothing more than the continuity of the same modernist theology of Vatican II.
Let the progressives continue mumbling their rage and let us charitably discuss with our closest friends, the recalcitrant traditionalists. And I clarify that with this denomination -I could not find a better one- I am not referring to any particular group, since there is a bit of everything everywhere.
And let us start from the evidence. In these almost thirty days, Pope Leo has given certain signs of continuity with the previous pontificate. It could not be otherwise for many reasons: education and basic courtesy, sincere coincidence on several points, and elementary political prudence. I do not think I am falling into naïve wishful thinking if I say that a good part of the measures we have disliked the least have been dictated precisely by this prudence. Let us look, for example, at some appointments. We commented here on the case of the confirmation of the election of the progressive bishop of St. Gallen in Switzerland; for many that was enough to pigeonhole Leo XIV. I suspect, however, that such people have never held an executive position in any organization of any importance. It would be imprudent to oppose, just two weeks after his election, such an appointment, which would arouse not only an ecclesiastical but also a civil conflict with the Swiss authorities because of the concordat. But more importantly, he has no one to appoint. Those who know the Swiss clergy know that, with very few exceptions, they are rabidly progressive. Or did they expect him to appoint a conservative priest as bishop? One can easily imagine what would happen, because it has already happened: it is enough to recall the examples of Bishop Haas in Chur and Bishop Groër in Vienna.
Let us turn to the few Argentine appointments of the last few days. On May 28, the Pope appointed Monsignor Alejandro Pablo Benna bishop of Morón. And Monsignor Raúl Martín Archbishop of Paraná. I cannot say anything about the former because I do not know him. I do know the second one, and we talked about him in this blog. He is a minor character who did his best to persecute the good priests of his diocese of Santa Rosa and the faithful more attached to tradition. We will see what he does in Parana, the archdiocese that holds the legacy of Bishop Servando Tortolo. Why did Pope Leo appoint these bishops then? Because he has no other choice. We have been saying it in this page for years: Bergoglio mortgaged the Argentinean church for at least two decades, and we will have to get used to the fact that the appointments in our country will continue to be bad. In Argentina there are 146 bishops, of which 96 are active as ordinary or auxiliary bishops, all of them rather young and mediocre, and some of them abusers of teenagers. There are small dioceses with three bishops. In other words, new episcopal consecrations are unlikely to take place in the next few years because we have bishops to move upwards. At the most, they will move from one see to another and, in the best of cases, and given their characteristics, they will adapt to the new airs. A paradigmatic example has been Bishop Sergio Buenanueva, Bishop of San Francisco, who, from being a strictly observant Ratzingerian, became a delirious Franciscan, and in the last few weeks has already taken up his position as a Leonian of the first hour (we reported on his acrobatics here).
We could also refer to Leo XIV's affirmation that marriage is between a man and a woman, which, beyond the obvious, has a very particular meaning after the Bergoglian “magisterium”, but much has been written about it in Catholic pages. More important, however, seems to me the affirmation made in last Sunday's homily. In a very clear and definite way he affirmed: “Therefore, with a heart full of gratitude and hope, I say to you spouses: marriage is not an ideal, but the model of true love between man and woman: total, faithful, and fruitful love”. This is a coup de grâce to the theology of Cardinal Tucho Fernandez, who is probably trembling in his little house nestled in the Vatican gardens thinking that he will have to return to his hometown, a “manure town” as he himself described it. The fact is that Fiducia supplicans and a good part of Francis' merciful morality was based on the erroneous [Rorate adds: and very Jesuit] premise that both for marital fidelity and for the chastity of people who are attracted to others of the same sex, as for any other moral topic, the Church proposed, in its commandments and teachings, ideals towards which it was necessary to tend but which would be difficult to achieve in this life. For this very reason, with a quick discernment one could live in adultery without problems of conscience, and with a simple request one could bless sodomitical unions. It is already something, said the Bergoglio-Fernandez duo, that these poor sinners want to come closer to God; there will be time for them to reach the ideal; meanwhile, mercy for everyone and all. Pope Leo, as soon as he began his pontificate, has said with all the letters: perfection is not an ideal but a model; that is, it is possible to reach it, with the help of God's grace, for any baptized person.
