Cardinal Fernández criticizes 2006 CDF notification on Father Jon Sobrino’s works

May 22, 2026

Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, criticized the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Notification on the Works of Fr. Jon Sobrino, S.J..

The congregation, then led by Cardinal William Levada, issued the notification in 2006 with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI. The notification declared that some of the Spanish Jesuit’s works contain “notable discrepancies with the faith of the Church.”

Speaking at Pontifical Urban University on May 12, Cardinal Fernández said that the notification “does not encourage the effort to take seriously the context in which theological reflection takes place. It seems to indicate rather that the theology made in the context of the poor is inadequate and dangerous, that is, that the life of the poor may occupy only a marginal place in the reflection of faith.”

Cardinal Fernández recalled that in 2007, he published an article on the notification that subsequently led to a delay in his approval as rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina:

In 2010, when the Argentine Episcopate proposed me as Rector of the Pontifical University of Buenos Aires, that article reappeared and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith did not immediately grant the nihil obstat. At that time there was an exchange of letters with the Dicastery, which forced me to to publish a new article in which I would have to retract my affirmations.

Therefore, I published a second article in 2011, in which I reiterated what I said earlier, but added sentences like these: “It is it is precisely the faith of the Church that provides the most solid and profound foundations to look at the poor as God looks at them and to be concerned about their situation”; “No one perceives evil better than attacks on the dignity of the marginalized by those who allow themselves to be enlightened by the faith of the Church.”

Furthermore, I continued to argue that the simple fact of accepting tradition of the Church can leave us indifferent to the history in which God has inserted us, if at the same time we do not have our eyes open to what is happening around us. This is why I have re-proposed the expression “immediate inescapable context”, explaining that this context is inevitable because “when a theologian reflects, cannot completely ignore or put the painful situation in parentheses that the majority of the People of God endure in the place where they live”, and that the context “invites those who receive Revelation to discover other aspects of his inexhaustible wealth”.

European theologians who spoke of contextual theologies did not even know that these articles had been published. But years later I heard these things from a Pope, who considered that reflection can only be made starting from the life of the People of God. This expression “from” has been fundamental in the thought of Pope Francis, as when he maintained that we see better if you look at it from the peripheries, or that some things are better understood if you they are seen by what the poor see.

Cardinal Fernández made his remarks in “A critical experience on contextual theology,” the opening section of a lecture entitled “Provocations on Contextual Theology. Opening Address at the Study Day ‘Milestones in Contextual Theology Today.” Cardinal Fernández entitled the lecture’s subsequent sections “Relationship between contextual theology and inculturation,” “Relation to the question of the development of dogma,” and “Some examples and sincere concerns.”

 

---

For all current news, visit our News home page.

---

 
Further information:

• Provocazioni sulla teologia contestuale (Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, 5/12/26)
• Some texts by Card. Victor Manuel Fernández (Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith)
• Notification on the Works of Fr. Jon Sobrino, S.J. (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 11/26/06)