Critic of CDF’s 2021 rejection of same-sex unions named undersecretary of Vatican dicastery

November 06, 2026

Pope Leo XIV appointed two new undersecretaries of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development: Father Avelino Chicoma Bundo Chico, S.J., the dicastery’s office head, and Claudia Leal Luna, a professor at the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences.

Pope Leo’s November 5 appointment of Professor Leal to the dicastery came two weeks after the Pontiff named her a member of the International Theological Commission. In its analysis of commission appointments, the National Catholic Register reported that “in 2021, Leal publicly criticized a Responsum ad dubium issued by Cardinal Luis Ladaria, Cardinal Fernández’s predecessor as prefect of the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which declared that the Church has no power to bless same-sex unions.”

“Leal criticized the Vatican ruling’s anthropology as ‘somewhat taxidermic,’ adding that it left ‘a bitter taste in a great many people’s mouth’ and came as an ‘epistemological shock,’“ the Register added.

 

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Further information:

• Resignations and Appointments (Holy See Press Office, 11/5/26)
• Appointment of Undersecretaries of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, 11/5/26)
• Some International Theological Commission members at odds with Church teaching (CWN, 10/24/26)