Pope makes ‘art of kissing’ bishop his watchdog for doctrine

Victor Manuel Fernandez will run the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith after contributing to some of Francis’s key policies.

Pope Francis has been close to Victor Manuel Fernandez for many years

The Pope has triggered a radical shake-up at the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog by naming as its next chief a close ally who once wrote a book on the art of kissing.

Argentinian Archbishop of La Plata Victor Manuel Fernandez will run the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith after contributing to some of Pope Francis’s key policies, including a 2016 document that opened the door to divorced and remarried Catholics obtaining communion.

Archbishop Fernandez, 60, wrote a book on kissing in 1995, of which he said at the time: “I hope it helps you kiss better and motivates you to release the best of yourself in a kiss.”

In the introduction to Heal Me With Your Mouth – The Art of Kissing, the priest, then 33, wrote “that this book was not written based on my own experience, but based on the lives of people who kiss”. He had wanted to focus on what poets had written about kissing. “The kiss is a meeting of the two in a moment in which there is nothing else besides them, and nothing else matters,” he wrote.

The Vatican did not mention the book in the partial list of his publications it issued with the announcement of his appointment.

The appointment of Archbishop Fernandez, which is likely to irk Francis’s conservative opponents, was described as an “ecclesial earthquake” by British Catholic publication The Tablet.

As he named Archbishop Fernandez to run the Vatican’s doctrinal office, which descends from the Catholic Inquisition, the Pope made clear that he wanted him to focus less on hounding alleged heretics and more on promoting a God who “forgives, who saves, who liberates”.

In an open letter to Archbishop Fernandez, Francis said the dicastery had used “immoral methods” in the past, and added: “What I expect from you is certainly something very different.” The department was known for censoring wayward clerics when it was run by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the conservative German who took the name Benedict XVI when he was elected pope in 2005.

Francis, 86, who has promoted mercy before dogma during his papacy, told Archbishop Fernandez to avoid “desktop theology” driven by “a cold and hard logic”, and to focus on teaching that fuels hope and does not “critique and condemn”.

As old age and illness slow him down, the Pope is expected to ask Archbishop Fernandez to keep an eye on other departments and to play a role in an upcoming Synod expected to tackle the issues of female deacons, married priests and gay worshippers.

THE TIMES