Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe has said that attempts to label him a “progressive” are misguided, insisting that Catholic thought cannot be confined to ideological categories.
In an interview published on February 15 by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, conducted by its Vatican correspondent Iacopo Scaramuzzi, the English Dominican reflected on the legacy of Pope Francis, the direction of Pope Leo XIV and the ongoing development of synodality in the Church.
Responding to criticism from those who have described him as progressive, Cardinal Radcliffe said such judgements often came from people who had not engaged with his work. “Those who condemn me usually haven’t read anything I’ve written,” he said. “As a Catholic, I cannot accept being put in such a small box. As the Australian novelist Richard Flanagan wrote, ‘Labels are good for jam jars, not for human beings.’”
