[This interview was originally published in Spanish on October 26, 2026, by Religión Digital. It is translated and republished with permission.]
“It took us 19 centuries to show that slavery is repugnant to human dignity.” In an exclusive interview with Religión Digital, Cardinal Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández turns to that historical wound to explain how hard it can be for the Church to recognize the concrete consequences of each person’s dignity. In this conversation on the occasion of the publication of Venite ad Me, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) rejects after-the-fact justifications — “you have to perform a lot of mental contortions to deny reality” — and acknowledges the resistance to a way of proclaiming the Gospel that puts God’s love before moral obligation, because “habits don’t change so easily.”
At the same time, Fernández maintains that women’s access to positions of governance in the Holy See represents real change. “That is not cosmetic; it is real participation in the exercise of the pope’s power.” He does not sidestep the evident failures of witness in the Church, adding financial scandals and the violence of those who use social media to destroy other Catholics to the abuse crisis and its cover-up. He also places the implementation of the document in the hands of the bishops and the Dicastery for Evangelization, whose task it now is to turn reflection into synodal creativity and concrete ways of passing on the faith.
Q. Venite ad Me insists that the proclamation of God’s love must come before moral and religious obligation, and it questions moralistic and self-referential language. Is anything changing in the practice of the Doctrine of the Faith, so that this priority is recognized in its interventions too, and not only in this document?
A. The dicastery tries to work along those lines, presenting the demands of the Gospel as consequences of the beauty and harmony of what it proposes. But it is always a challenge, because we were educated in positivism and casuistry, and habits don’t change so easily.
Q. The text states that “no human or religious law or authority can ever declare anyone unworthy” of God’s love or the love of others. What pastoral consequences should that statement have for homosexual persons, the divorced and remarried, and those who have drifted away because they felt rejected by the Church?
A. It took us 19 centuries to show that slavery is repugnant to human dignity. It is pointless to talk around the issue to fool ourselves and maintain that the official Church was always against slavery; you have to perform a lot of mental contortions to deny reality. A few years before Leo XIII’s condemnation of slavery, a document of the Holy Office stated that slavery “is in no way repugnant to human dignity.” Perceiving the concrete consequences of recognizing the infinite dignity of every person is another challenge that, with the help of the Spirit, I hope we can meet better and better.
Q. The document considers it necessary for women to have access to the spheres where important decisions are made, and it says the dicastery has sent its conclusions to the pope. What concrete proposals have you presented, and how will you keep that participation from being merely consultative, without any real decision-making power?
A. On this point, beyond the debts still outstanding, we have to recognize that the Holy See has made great strides. Women continue to be appointed as heads of dicasteries or of important sections within them, and that is not consultative at all. Think of what the prefect of their dicastery has always meant to religious. Today a woman presides over it, and she is able to make decisions that seriously affect the life of many communities. That is not cosmetic; it is real participation in the exercise of the pope’s power.
Q. The document’s diagnosis pays a great deal of attention to secularization, individualism, and digital culture. Doesn’t the Church need to examine with equal depth its own responsibility for the loss of faith and trust: abuse and its cover-up, the persistent marginalization of women, clericalism, or the gap between what it preaches and what it does?
A. We could add certain financial scandals, the use of social media to destroy Catholics who think differently, with real violence and immoral means, and so many other failures of witness. The popes frequently ask for forgiveness. In the most recent encyclical, for example, the pope asked heartfelt forgiveness for slavery. But I have to say that in other spheres of the Church, even in associations or movements, acknowledging failures of witness is less common.
Q. You chose to offer open-ended “Considerations,” not a doctrinal note that closes the debate. What freedom will dioceses have to try out new paths, and what follow-up will make it possible to see whether Venite ad Me transforms communities or ends up as one more document that is quoted often and applied little?
A. Moving toward greater concreteness is the task of the Dicastery for Evangelization. In Fidem Servare, the DDF was entrusted with stimulating reflection on the transmission of the faith, and that is what it tried to do. But moving forward on more concrete aspects is the task of the bishops, who are called to synodal creativity in evangelization, and of the Dicastery for Evangelization, as a driving force of constant encouragement and motivation.
Q. Does the fact that the document has papal approval give special weight to the document, and to your tenure at the head of the Doctrine of the Faith?
A. Papal approval gives DDF documents a particular share in the ordinary Magisterium, as we all know, even when, as in this case, the aim is not to clarify a doctrinal question but to go deeper into something that directly affects the faith, such as its “transmission.”
Image: Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, with Msgr. Armando Matteo at a Holy See Press Office press conference. Photo: Vatican Media.
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