Consistory documents show cardinals cautious at start of Leo XIV’s reign

The four documents Pope Leo XIV ordered drawn up to inform a recent gathering of cardinals at the Vatican each took a somewhat different approach, a Crux review has determined, with each document showing a member of the last pontificate’s leadership cohort in a cautious posture as the new pope comes into his own.

At the consistory convoked by Pope Leo for Jan. 7-8, four issues were on the table for discussion: Synod and synodality; Pope Francis’s reform law, Praedicate Evangelium, which reshaped the Roman curia (the Catholic Church’s central governing and administrative apparatus); Pope Francis’s programmatic 2013 apostolic exhortation, Evangelii gaudium, on “The Joy of the Gospel”; the liturgy.

In the event, the pontiff gave the cardinals themselves the choice of which to discuss over their two-day meeting – the first of his pontificate – and the cardinals chose “synod and synodality” and Evangelii gaudium, arguably the more nebulous of the four topics on offer, and a temporizing choice in the absence of both familiarity with each other as a working body and of specific directives given from the top, down.

At the end of Jan. 7-8 consistory, Leo announced his intention to hold another meeting over two days at the end of June, and thereafter to meet at least annually for three-to-four-day stretches, but there is no word as yet on the agenda for the June 27-28 meeting.

The plan is already a marked departure from the practice of Leo’s immediate predecessor, who only very rarely called consistories for discussion purposes.

Ahead of the Jan. 7-8 gathering, four senior Vatican officials – all cardinals and all but one the head of a powerful office – had each prepared a paper on their area of responsibility, for the internal use of the cardinals taking part in the meeting.

The papers – independently obtained and confirmed by Crux last week – are each two pages in length, in both English and Italian.

The papers in brief

The Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, Cardinal Mario Grech, prepared the document on “synod and synodality” – a buzzword of the Francis era, discussion of which dominated the later years of the Francis pontificate but did not produce consensus regarding its meaning or even produce a generally accepted working definition – “as efficacious forms of collaboration to assist the Holy Father.”

Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, head of the Vatican’s doctrine office, prepared the paper on Evangelii gaudium.

Cardinal Arthur Roche, who heads the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, prepared the document on liturgy.

Cardinal Fabio Baggio – undersecretary of the Section for Migrants and Refugees in the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development – prepared the document on Pope Francis’s reform of the Roman curia in Praedicate Evangelium.

Baggio on curial reform

The choice of Baggio to prepare the paper on the curial reform is interesting, not least because Baggio holds an historically unusual position within the Roman administrative framework: A cardinal serving as a subordinate to another – Jesuit Cardinal Michael Czerny  – who heads the dicastery in which Baggio is billeted as a nominal underling.

It was Czerny who first occupied the position, after Pope Francis – who created the Dicastery for Justice, Peace, and Integral Human Development in 2019 – raised then-Father Czerny to the red but left him in charge of the migrants section in the then-newly created “super-dicastery” under Cardinal Peter Turkson.

Baggio’s treatment, however, is a fairly standard government “white paper” reiterating the notions that guided the Francis-era curial reform but offering little in the way of explanation of how things in the bureaucracy are supposed to work.

Under the headings of double service, process of decentralization, and synodality, Baggio discusses what “the attentive reader” of Praedicate “cannot fail to see [are] the many novel elements” introduced in Francis’s paper reform of the curia.

“Double service” refers to the notion that the curia not only serves the Roman pontiff but also the bishops of the world.

“Sound decentralization” – Baggio’s term, borrowed from Pope Francis – refers in the paper to the “spirit” according to which “the authority to resolve” matters not touching “the Church’s unity of doctrine, discipline and communion,” but the paper is short on how to determine what is in the curial bailiwick and what is not.

“[F]urther consideration should be given to applying this criterion to legal matters that are more local than universal in nature,” Baggio writes (explicitly indicating that he is sharing his own opinion), “and which continue to be handled by institutions and offices of the Roman Curia [sic], with bureaucratic burdens and expenses that could be avoided.”

As cumbersome and unwieldy as it is even to bring a given issue to Rome, let alone to have Rome manage the business, shifting the burden away from the Roman curia will not make the bureaucratic necessity of dealing with it disappear – whatever “it” is – but only shift it.

It is not surprising, then, that cardinals holding their first business meeting as a group under a new principal should have punted that question.

A thorny question, untouched

Conspicuous by way of absence from Baggio’s paper, meanwhile, was any discussion or even hint at arguably the thorniest notion driving the broad curial reform during the whole Francis era: The idea that “the power of governance in the Church does not come from the sacrament of Holy Orders, but from the canonical mission,” received – in the case of the Roman curia – from the pope, as then-Father Gianfranco Ghirlanda, Jesuit priest and noted canonist who would later get the red hat from Francis, put it in March of 2022 when Praedicate evangelium was promulgated.

That notion would – in theory – make it possible for lay persons and religious without Holy Orders to exercise governance power, and it was tested in January of 2025, when Pope Francis named Sr. Simona Brambilla to head the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

Francis appeared, however, to hedge on the idea that someone without Holy Orders could exercise governance, even vicariously. When he appointed Brambilla, Francis also named Salesian Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime as pro-prefect – an unusual step, observers noted – and Fernández Artime’s signature began appearing on official documents from the head office in the dicastery.

It is a wonky sort of question full of inside baseball, the sort of thing arguably best left to time for sorting rather than to cardinals or legal experts, but one that will sooner or later require some sort of address one way or another.

Baggio on synodality

Baggio’s discussion of “synodality” in the curial reform was mostly a reiteration of Francis-era boilerplate about “reciprocal listening and walking together” in which the various departments and offices of the curia are “called to be principally ‘centers of listening’, constantly set to the frequencies of the local Churches, zealous receivers of the concerns of the Bishops and of their collaborators.”

If Baggio was cognizant of any tension between that take on practical curial synodality and the notion of decentralization, or sensible of any reluctance local bishops may have to the notion of Rome as a listening station, he did not betray it.

Grech on “synod and synodality”

The document actually dedicated to “synod and synodality” was a fairly straightforward rehearsal of the “state of the question” in ecclesiastical terms, but it contained two interesting notes:

• A recognition that the various “forms of exercise of synodality” at various levels “don’t always need to be exercised institutionally with the convocation of a synodal assembly.”
• A punctual assertion that “the Synod [of Bishops, of which Grech is general secretary] constitutes a significant institution of the Catholic Church.”

The second point is particularly noteworthy, especially after Leo reminded the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops – not two full months after his election – that the Synod of Bishops, despite the raising of its profile and expansion of its workload under Francis, remains essentially what Pope St. Paul VI created it to be at the close of the Vatican Council II in 1965.

“The Synod of Bishops naturally retains its institutional physiognomy,” Leo told the Secretariat on June 26, 2025, in terse remarks totaling fewer than 200 words in the original Italian.

“I cannot remain with you all afternoon,” Leo told members of the Secretariat gathered with him in private audience that day, “ [but] I would be happy to take this opportunity to share an idea that I consider central,” he said, “and then to listen to you in the time available to me.”

Leo acknowledged that the Synod of Bishops “is enriched by the fruits that have matured” during the Francis era, but “the legacy [Pope Francis] has left us,” Leo said, “seems to me to be above all this: that synodality is a style, an attitude that helps us to be Church, promoting authentic experiences of participation and communion.”

Whatever that may mean, it does not suggest boundless enthusiasm for radical revolution in the Church’s self-understanding, nor will it ever be an engine of radical institutional change, or power any such engine, for that matter.

(Interested readers will find a lengthier discussion of the point in Leo XIV: The New Pope and Catholic Reform.)

Fernández on “rereading Evangelii gaudium”

Rather than offer an interpretation of the 2013 exhortation, Fernández offered a précis of the document, recapitulating its structure and main themes in carefully organized and succinctly stated points.

“The Holy Father has asked us to reread Evangelii gaudium,” Fernández wrote. “It is therefore clear that this is not a text that has expired with the preceding Pontiff,” he continued, because “it is a matter of putting at the center the keygma,” i.e., the fearless and ever-fresh proclamation of the Good News of salvation, “and of relaunching that proclamation with renewed ardor.”

“The Holy Father,” Fernández says, “indicates to us, therefore, that there can certainly be changes in respect to the preceding pontificate, but that the challenge placed by Evangelii gaudium cannot be buried.”

The principal takeaways from his own rereading were, for Fernández, “The need to remain open to the reform of our practices, styles, and organizations, aware that often our procedures are not always the best,” and “the need to review frequently our preaching and interventions, because often we entertain so many questions, and that announcement [It. annuncio, i.e. “proclamation”] is buried.”

Beyond those points, which left the whole field wide open to Leo’s direction, Fernández noted that “Evangelii gaudium reminds us that not all the truths of the doctrine of the Church have the same importance.”

“There exists above all,” Fernández said, “a ‘heart’ or a ‘fundamental core’. The other teachings of the Church are all true, but linked in diverse ways to this ‘heart’.”

There is a very real sense in which that frame of the matter is quite right, and perfectly acceptable. At least, even the most cautious theologians will admit it is susceptible of an orthodox construction.

One of the most frustrating things for observers of the last pontificate, however, was the sense that everything was up for grabs. This frustration cut across ideological divides and could be found across the whole spectrum of opinion in the Church, even though it arose and found expression over different particular matters that – once believed settled – more or less suddenly found themselves under discussion.

For a decade, as Francis’s go-to ghostwriter and theological eminence grise, Fernández helped his former principal stir the pot. When Francis finally called Fernández to Rome to take an official role at the head of the doctrine dicastery, he took the unusual step of causing to be published a personal letter to Fernández, in which he explained he did not want Fernández’s DDF to police doctrine, so much as to foster theological dialogue.

It led observers to wonder how a fellow with that sort of mission profile would conduct the institutional business of doctrinal oversight, and – frankly – what good a doctrinal office might be, which did not bother overmuch with doctrinal integrity.

That was then. This is now.

To the extent there are tea leaves there for the reading, the Fernández paper may be the doctrine prefect’s attempt to do two things at once: Offer a sort of apologia pro vita sua and at the same time convey to Pope Leo that he likes his job and is willing to play by whatever rules Leo sees fit to set for him.

Roche on Liturgy

A great deal of ink has already been spilt over the liturgy paper by Cardinal Arthur Roche, whose work stands out among the four papers, both for its pugnacity and for its selective use of history both recent and remote.

Roche cites the 1570 bull of Pope St. Pius V, Quo primum, promulgating the liturgical books containing the rites and rubrics comprising what is commonly known as the Tridentine order of worship, for example: “As in the Church of God there is only one way of reciting the psalms, so there ought to be one rite for celebrating Mass.”

To read only that line from Quo primum exactly as Roche presented it, one could be forgiven the impression the statement was both conclusive and dispositive, but one would be mistaken on both counts.

The statement was not even a complete thought, but a clause Roche culled from a complex sentence running most of the length of the preambulatory first paragraph of the blessedly concise document and cobbled together as though it were a stand-alone sentence.

The introductory paragraph from which Roche culled and cobbled the clause explained, in short, that the liturgical books being promulgated in 1570 were in keeping with the recently reformed breviary, and completed the liturgical reform – essentially a codification of the Roman rite of Mass – for both of which the Fathers of the Council of Trent had called.

In the dispositive portion of Quo primum, Pius gave permission – in words – for the continued use of other books in “those [places] in which the practice of saying Mass differently was granted over 200 years ago simultaneously with the Apostolic See’s institution and confirmation of the church, and those in which there has prevailed a similar custom followed continuously for a period of not less than 200 years.”

Basically, if a local Church or institute or Order could show 200 years of continuous use, they could carry on using their books.

The primary reason for both the reform and the requirement to show two centuries of continuous use was that bad and sometimes heretical ideas had crept into liturgical books in the generations prior to the Council of Trent.

It was mere prudent regard for the integrity of the principle according to which “the law of prayer is the law of belief” – lex orandi lex credendi – and neither love of antiquity for antiquity’s sake, nor mania for uniformity had anything to do with it.

That point is significant, because the subtext of Roche’s intervention – which became explicit only in the ninth of the eleven paragraphs of his two-page brief – was Pope Francis’s highly controversial and extremely unpopular motu proprio, Traditionis custodes, abrogating Benedict XVI’s liberalizing reform allowing wide use of the older books and imposing draconian restrictions on the celebration of Mass and other rites according to them.

In fact, the effective suppression of the old books – though not a complete suppression, from a strictly juridical point of view, according to Benedict XVI’s normative opinion as expressed in his 2007 liberalizing reform, Summorum Pontificum – was shocking in its heavy-handedness when Pope St. Paul VI promulgated the new books in 1969, four years after the close of the Vatican Council II.

“The use of the liturgical books the Council sought to reform was, from St. John Paul II to Pope Francis, a concession that in no way envisaged their promotion,” Roche wrote.

That is only accurate if one ignores both the plain sense and the ipsissima verba of Benedict’s law.

“Pope Francis—while granting, in accordance with Traditionis Custodes [sic], the use of the 1962 Missale Romanum [i.e., the last version of the old Missal published before the Vatican Council II]—pointed the way to unity in the use of the liturgical books promulgated by the holy Popes Paul VI and John Paul II,” Roche wrote, “in accordance with the decrees of the Second Vatican Council, the sole expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.”

Takeaways

Alone among the paper-writers, Roche staked out and argued a case for continuity with Leo’s predecessor, but the cardinals gathered in consistory Jan. 7-8 punted on the liturgical question, so it remains to be seen whether Roche’s case will even get a hearing when they gather again in June.

Whether under Fernández or someone else, DDF is awaiting orders and direction. If it is to be Fernández in the long term – at least for another couple of years, until his five-year mandate expires in 2028 – he has given every indication of willingness to be a good soldier under Leo XIV, and Leo has so far shown himself more interested in harnessing and directing the evangelical élan of his predecessor, while steering well clear of doctrinal adventure.

There is unfinished business related to Francis’s reform of the Roman curia, but the cardinals punted on that question, too.

On synodality, Leo has basically carte blanche to give the idea both form and content, after a dozen years of talking, or, having paid it the necessary decorous lip service, to let it now become a “style” and either grow organically or die on the vine.

By the two issues the cardinals chose to discuss during their first Leonine consistory – Evangelii gaudium and synodality – it appears they are, as a body, just as keen as were the four erstwhile Francis-lieutenants who authored the papers to learn where they are to go in the slowly dawning Leonine era.

Follow Chris Altieri on X: @craltieri