Argentinian curial cardinal Leonardi Sandri sees the Catholic Church at the beginning of a new epoch with the pontificate of Pope Francis. It will recall “the essential things” and call for dialogue. Cardinal Sandri sees a “revolutionary pontificate” coming to the church. “With Francis a springtime of the church is beginning,” he said to La Nacion on Sunday. “His name is already a message”
Meanwhile, Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, does not think he is a “revolutionary.” He said on Monday, “The fundamentals of the Church given by God cannot be changed by humans.” At the same time, he reaffirmed that “our talk of the dignity of the person must be put into practice, we must point out unjust structures prophetically and critically, and we must actively resist them because they diametrically oppose the Christian view of the person.” Müller does not see a need for a revision of the position of the Church toward liberation theology, because the declaration of 1986 states well how this theology can be understood in a positive, Catholic sense.
Regarding the new pontificate, Müller could well imagine a new style and a “change in method.” In the “way of expressing church life, we can’t always just copy the past and continue it unchanged.” But Pope Francis stands for continuity in proclamation of the faith, according to Müller.
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