Pope Francis has decided not to renew Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s term as prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), instead appointing Archbishop Luis Ladaria SJ, second in command at the CDF, as his successor.
Some commentators saw the move as a “papal smackdown” against a cardinal who had insisted that divorced and remarried Catholics could not be admitted to Communion unless they were living “as brother and sister”. Cardinal Müller said that Pope Francis’s document Amoris Laetitia had to be read in light of the teaching of the Church.
