The Potential New Head of the CDF

 

Speculation is growing that diminutive Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna is soon to be appointed prelate for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the oldest among the nine congregations of the Roman Curia.

Edward Pentin has provided an exhaustive analysis of this which you can read here. In it, Pentin details the positive things about Scicluna, but also how he seems to have changed dramatically under this papacy and has said and done some deeply problematic things.

Scicluna held positions in the Roman Curia from 1995 to 2012, when he was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Malta. Both as a curial official and since becoming a bishop he has conducted investigations into sexual abuse by clergy on behalf of the Holy See and led a board that reviews such cases. He has been called "the Vatican's most respected sex crimes expert" by the Washington Post.

Scicluna obtained a doctorate in canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1991. His thesis supervisor was Raymond Burke and he presented it to Professor Urbano Navarrete Cortés, SJ; both later became cardinals.

In 2015 he was appointed Archbishop of Malta, and I wrote this glowing appraisal with a follow up post here.

Many clerics and lay people I know have looked to Scicluna as a bit of a Catholic hero. Intelligent, courageous and a true son of the Church. His investigative work for the curia means he knows where certain bodies are buried. He has historically been considered as orthodox with no agenda other than standing for Christ and an individual who is not afraid to stand up for the marginalised and speak truth to power.

Then came the Francis Pontificate. 

With Francis as Pope, Scicluna seemed to ditch his faith, knowledge and training and go all out to pursue high office. He has made a number of embarrassing errors.

The disastrous Maltese Guidelines saw a  dreadful capitulation which appeared to be nothing more than the two Maltese bishops acting as tools for Pope Francis to willingly undermine Catholic teaching in exchange for power and influence. In the aftermath, Maltese clergy were confused and hurt and the lay faithful felt utterly betrayed. Despite this, Scicluna went on to defend the guidelines, going as far as telling concerned seminarians that if they did not agree with Pope Francis, they were free to leave!

In the following months Scicluna went on to Capitulate on contraception, welcome Islam to Malta in a manner which has even stunned the Muslims and then be thanked by Pope Francis for his wonderful guidelines on Chapter 8 of Amorous lacivious.

Scicluna went on to contradict Church teaching on homosexuality in the most humiliating way later actually contradicting the Catechism of the Catholic Church in his eagerness to please Pope Francis and was a central contributor to the Pope's utterly cringeworthy Vatican summit on sex abuse.

As the great scholar Fr Hunwicke commented today:

[Scicluna] is on record as having uttered one of the most stark, comprehensive, and pure articulations of the Bergoglianical error:

"Whoever wishes to discover what Jesus wants from him, he must ask the pope, this pope, not the one who came before him, or the one who came before that. This present pope."

I ... and you ... should never pass hasty judgments. But I find it hard to believe that such a person is fit to occupy such a sensitive post.

Despite this worrying problems, it is important to state that Mario Grech's appointment was the real outrage, not this Scicluna's who is by far the better man & many would have said this is a good appointment before the dreadful Maltese guidelines were written. Scicluna is very intelligent, and in spite of his flaws, he loves the Church, and has already contributed so much. He has had time to reflect on the "Guidelines" he had a hand in and their effect on the Church. Let us pray for him that if appointed, he puts his great intellect to use for God's work in the service of truth and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.