The Irish priest appointed to a senior role at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith has spoken of his commitment to “dialogue and collaboration” as part of the pope’s priorities of evangelisation and preaching the Gospel.
Monsignor John Kennedy from Dublin was named as secretary of the CDF’s discipline section, which handles clergy sexual abuse cases, while Monsignor Armando Matteo was appointed as secretary of the doctrinal section. The CDF will become the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in June.
Pope Francis also appointed Cardinal Michael Czerny SJ for a five-year term as Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and Sr Alessandra Smerilli as Secretary of the same Dicastery.
Speaking to The Tablet, Msgr Kennedy said the pope is putting the focus on evangelisation and preaching the Gospel. “That asks us to look at things in a new way and to enter into a greater sense of dialogue and collaboration with each other.”
He said a dicastery was a ministry, not in a political sense, but in the sense of service.
Asked if becoming a dicastery would change the perception of the CDF as the inquisition, the 53-year-old canon lawyer highlighted how Pope Paul VI had said that if the focus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was defending the faith, the best way to defend the faith was to teach it.
“So what Pope Francis is doing is almost going back to what Paul VI said and the spirit and the focus is on evangelisation rather than on defending. If we were creating the CDF today, we might call it a think tank or we might call it quality control,” he said.
Fifty-three-year-old Kennedy from Dublin has worked for the CDF since 2003. He was appointed head of the disciplinary section in 2017.
In his new role as co-secretary of the CDF, he now reports directly to the Prefect, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, who is due to retire this July.
The priest, who was ordained for the Archdiocese of Dublin in 1993, said he was “very glad” to “play my part in making the church a better place for everybody, particularly for children”.
“Being a product of the Irish Church, I have seen the impact that this [the abuse scandals] has had on the lives of people, the lives of communities and parishes, and how people have lost faith.”
In a 2019 interview with the Associated Press, Kennedy said the CDF had seen a “tsunami” of abuse cases from parts of the world that had previously not reported any cases.
Although the number of cases the Vatican congregation is dealing with now had levelled off “fractionally” from 2019, it was still very high, he told The Tablet.
“This is because people are finding the courage to come forward and bishops and religious superiors throughout the world are much more prompt in bringing these cases to the attention of the congregation.
“If you look at the pattern of those countries experiencing a growth in number of cases, they include Poland as well as traditionally catholic countries in South America, Asia as well as Africa.
“We have taken three Polish priests to work with us, so we are doing our best to respond in a very positive and timely manner.”
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