RNS report – In a major shake-up of the Vatican’s administration, Pope Francis replaced Catholicism’s top theologian, a conservative German cardinal who has been at odds with the pontiff’s vision of a more inclusive church. A brief Vatican statement Saturday (July 1) said Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mueller’s five-year mandate as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a key department charged with defending Catholic doctrine, would not be renewed.
Mueller, 69, who was appointed by former Pope Benedict in 2012, will be succeeded by the department’s No. 2, Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer.
Ladaria, a 73-year-old Spaniard who, like the Argentine pope, is a member of the Jesuit order, is said by those who know him to be a soft-spoken person who shuns the limelight. Mueller, by contrast, often appears in the media.
“They speak the same language and Ladaria is someone who is meek. He does not agitate the pope and does not threaten him,” said a priest who works in the Vatican and knows both Mueller and Ladaria, asking not to be named.
Since his election in 2013, Francis has given hope to progressives who want him to forge ahead with his vision for a more welcoming church that concentrates on mercy rather than the strict enforcement of rigid rules they see as antiquated … read more