Is the Synod Redefining Papal Infallibility?

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Is the Synod Redefining Papal Infallibility?

By: Gaetano Masciullo [Emphasis - The Catacombs] | October 9, 2026

A proposed revision to Canon 749 raises a fundamental question: who determines the truth of Catholic doctrine? Gaetano Masciullo examines the Synod’s vision of infallibility, the expansion of lay authority, and what these changes could mean for the Church’s teaching office and Sacred Tradition.

Today in the Vatican it is possible to identify a plurality of centers of power, operating within a complex dialectic between strategic convergence and internal tensions. Bergoglio acted as several sovereigns and emperors of the past did, that is, he concentrated power in his own hands during his lifetime, even going beyond what is granted to a Pope by divine law, while at the same time preparing a deliberate fragmentation of this very power that would explode at the moment of his death, precisely to prevent a single successor from monopolizing it and changing its direction.


Tetrarchy in the Vatican?

This is the technique employed by great emperors of the past, such as Genghis Khan or (perhaps a more fitting example in our case) Diocletian, the Roman emperor who prepared the Tetrarchy, that is, a system with four emperors in order to preserve the political project and to prevent the fate of the entire Empire from depending on the will of a single successor.

Paradoxically, the Pope has become, among these four new major centers of power, the least “influential” of them all, although on paper he remains the summit of the Church from every point of view; and he certainly remains so, because the Church is of divine institution, which no one can modify according to his own arbitrary will.

In addition to the Pope, among these centers of power we find the Secretariat of State, which retains control over the most delicate international dossiers (such as the secret agreements with China and multilateral dialogue) and exercises pervasive control over the bureaucratic machinery through offices such as that of the Substitute (a role formerly held by the controversial Edgar Peña Parra), but above all through its influence over episcopal appointments in synergy with the Secretariat of the Dicastery for Bishops.

The third tetrarch is the Roman Curia as a whole. Once at the service of the Pope, over the last twelve years it has become a revolutionary bureaucratic and doctrinal apparatus that dictates to the Pope the agenda to be followed.

Leo XIV himself said at the beginning of his pontificate: “Popes pass, the Curia remains”: an announcement that appeared revealing and programmatic. The Bergoglian Curia now acts by seeking to preserve the acceleration initiated by its founding father and finds its nerve centers in the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, a true sounding board for the environmentalist agenda and a privileged interface with the Popular Movements and the UN; in the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, until now led by Cardinal Fernández; and in the Dicastery for Divine Worship, which intends to pursue a precise agenda of liturgical reform (aka demolition).

There is a fourth and final center of power that Bergoglio established during his years of rule, namely the Secretariat of the Synod. Led by Cardinal Mario Grech and including key figures from the progressive world such as Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich (who is its General Rapporteur), the Secretariat of the Synod is not merely an organizational body, but the driving force of the ecclesiological engineering of the post-conciliar Church. A laboratory that realized the dream of many revolutionary Jesuits of the last century.

The Secretariat collects, synthesizes, and often steers the impulses coming from local Churches and the more “advanced” European episcopates (such as the German and Belgian ones), serving as a buffer between the most radical reform proposals and the authority of the Pope.


A Proposal to Amend Canon Law

On September 29, the Secretariat of the Synod published the final report of the canonical commission, led by Filippo Iannone, the Prefect for Bishops chosen by Leo XIV, and by Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda, Bergoglio’s leading canonist and architect of some of the most important legislative reforms carried out by the Argentinian.

This report proposes restructuring the Latin Code of Canon Law to make it more consistent with the new “needs” of the synodal Church. The main reform proposals mostly include granting laypeople – both men and women – governmental, judicial, and liturgical roles that until now have been reserved to the ordained clergy.

For example, the reform of canon 1425 §4, which would provide for the possibility of a layperson (man or woman) serving as a “sole judge” in first-instance trials involving serious sanctions such as dismissal of a priest from the clerical state and the declaration or imposition of excommunication; the reform of canon 463 §1, which would provide for the requirement that laypeople constitute the majority of members in diocesan synods; the reform of 512 §4, which would allow the appointment to diocesan pastoral councils of Christians belonging to “Churches not in full communion with the Catholic Church”; the reform of canons 230 §3 and 1112 §1, delegating to laypeople (men or women) the authority to assist at marriages without the need for prior authorization from the Holy See and even to lead the liturgical prayers proper to this sacrament.

According to statements by Cardinal Grech and the Commission, the purpose of this reform would be to convert into binding legal norms the ecclesiology that “emerged from the synodal journey.” Canon law is understood as the juridical expression of the Church’s perception of herself, necessary so that theological reflection on so-called “co-responsibility” does not remain purely theoretical.


The Reinterpretation of the Dogmatic Concept of Infallibility

Understandably, many analysts focused on this aspect of the canonical reform proposed by the Synod, namely the extension of governance to laypeople. Less attention, however, has been given to another proposal by the same commission, in my view more serious and important, although it is specular and directly connected to the one that received greater attention.

Among the proposed amendments, in fact, the rewriting of canon 749 §1 reinterprets the concept of infallibility. This is not a minor amendment, since infallibility is a very important theological and dogmatic concept for Catholic doctrine.

Infallibility, traditionally restricted to the Supreme Pontiff and, in a subordinate sense, to the College of Bishops under specific conditions, is now extended to the entire body of the faithful.

The proposal for the new canon states that the totality of the baptized, having received the anointing of the Holy Spirit, “cannot err in matters of faith.” Such infallibility would manifest itself through universal consensus. In this way, the “supernatural sense of faith of the entire people… from the bishops down to the last of the lay faithful” would become the new measure (at least apparently) of truth.

Note the usual lexical manipulation, typical of neo-modernism. “Sense,” that is, feeling, elevated to a criterion. Catholic Tradition always regarded the sensus fidei, that is, the people’s sentiment of faith, with great respect, but it has never considered it a measure of truth, also because, in the past, there have been several moments in which the majority of baptized faithful – laity and clergy – believed in erroneous doctrines: consider the Arian crisis or the great diffusion of Protestant and related ideas between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Every feeling is a sign of something real, but this does not mean that it is necessarily a sign of truth. It certainly has an important experiential dimension worthy of consideration, but it is not an autonomous source of Revelation – as some modernist theologians would have it – precisely because a feeling cannot be authoritative.

Some great theologians of the past, such as St. Vincent of Lérins, St. Robert Bellarmine, and John of St. Thomas, taught that the con-sensus of the faithful is worthy of consideration because it is a privileged witness to Tradition, that is, to the transmission of the same doctrine from the time of the Apostles.

St. Vincent of Lérins coined the famous maxim: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus (“everywhere, always, by everyone”). When one considers history and sees that a certain doctrine has been continuously transmitted and believed, especially at the liturgical level, then that doctrine is worthy of belief. Therefore, the sensus fidei is the reflection in the people of God of the faith preached by the teaching Church and is what confirms Tradition, without judging it.

One could also say that, traditionally, the People of God must be listened to in order to understand how the faith is lived, not to establish what is true. It may also happen, and it has often happened in the history of the Church, that because of a crisis of authority the People of God live the faith badly. In such a case, the People of God must not be indulged, but admonished and corrected.


A New Conception of Power in the Church?

The proposal for canonical reform reverses this traditional vision. It stands in continuity with a theological tendency of recent times that seeks to reform the traditional concept of the power of governance in the Church, according to which authority arises from God through charism. We will return to this shortly.

Traditionally speaking, in the Church there are two parallel hierarchies, united but distinct: the hierarchy of order and the hierarchy of jurisdiction. The first has the bishop at its summit, who possesses the fullness of Holy Orders; the second has the Pope at its summit, who possesses direct, universal, and absolute jurisdiction over ecclesiastical laws.

Over the centuries, various schools of thought have arisen to study, deepen, and understand to what extent the bond between these two hierarchies should exist, but the majority of authoritative theologians have always held that consecration, and episcopacy in particular, makes the subject especially “suited” to receiving the power of governance, while the two hierarchies – as stated – remain formally distinct and are not confused with one another.

This is, moreover, fitting to the very nature of the Church, which is not only hierarchical but also sacral in its foundations, in which the teaching Church and the learning Church must remain clearly distinct for proper functioning, and where the munus docendi (“office of teaching”) is traditionally considered part of the munus regendi (“office of governance”). Only those who govern also have teaching authority: the Pope above all, and then the bishops united to him. Teaching, in fact, is the noblest act of governance, because it guides the will not through coercion, but through conviction.

Moreover, it is fitting that the power of governance should not derive immediately and automatically from Holy Orders (this too being a tendency of thought that spread in the post-Council period, especially in conservative circles), also in order to avoid the presumption that merely being consecrated is sufficient to govern legitimately.

The two hierarchies must nevertheless remain tendentially united (although there have always been cases in history of laypeople to whom jurisdiction was delegated), both to maintain the unity of the three munera, that is, the offices of Christ (to sanctify, govern, and teach), and because the Church is neither merely a juridical society nor merely a sacramental reality: it is both.

Now, if governance is distributed horizontally, teaching also becomes horizontal, and the one who teaches is also the one who learns. Thus we witness the democratization and, ultimately, the relativization of Dogma. Exactly what the modernists want: to modify attitudes, while perhaps leaving doctrine intact on the pages of catechisms.

From this perspective, the munus docendi tends progressively to transform from an act of governance into an act of consultation; the Magisterium ceases to be conceived primarily as the objective criterion and sole legitimate interpreter of the twofold source of Revelation (Sacred Scripture and Tradition), and instead becomes the interpreter of a faith presumed already to be present and widespread among the people of God.

The charismatic vision of ecclesiastical authority was mentioned. Under the pontificate of Francis (and in the reflection of many cardinals close to him), the idea has emerged of completely severing the power of governance from the power of order, in order to anchor it in the transversal dignity of Baptism: two hierarchies no longer distinct but united, but neither confused with each other as certain conservative theologians would have it, but rather distinct and independent. A sort of ecclesiological Nestorianism.

On February 16, 2026, for example, Cardinal Marc Ouellet defended the lay appointments made by Francis, calling them a prophetic shift and proposing the development of an even more “charismatic” vision of Church governance. According to Ouellet, it would be Baptism – not the sacrament of Holy Orders – that makes the faithful “suited” to participate in a stable and proper manner in ecclesiastical governance.

Even earlier, in November 2025, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio suggested in one of his books modifying canon law precisely in order to stabilize and structure lay participation in the governance of the Church according to this “charismatic” vision. With this proposal from the Synod’s canonical commission, this project reached a greater degree of concretization.


The Tetrarchies of the Past Always Collapsed

In conclusion to this brief analysis, I would like to propose a reflection on Bergoglio’s strategy of dividing centers of power in order to preserve control of the Church’s direction along the path he had undertaken. Bergoglio’s strategy, as we said at the beginning, is not a new strategy in history.

Yet history itself teaches us that tetrarchies, or more generally systems of collegial government among several formally equal sovereigns, tend to fail for a structural reason: supreme authority is by its nature difficult to share stably.

This happens because every complex organization sooner or later requires a definitive decision. What the neo-modernists refuse to understand out of ideological obstinacy is that reality is by nature monarchical: this fact cannot be evaded.

In the event of conflict, when there is no truly common superior, the dispute inevitably tends to turn into internal struggle. Moreover, successors do not necessarily share the founder’s project. Sooner or later someone may arise who begins to ask himself: why be one of four when I can be the only one? And the experience of the post-conciliar Church teaches us that personalism is not exactly an unlikely temptation for bishops…

Furthermore, the nature of the human being means that people tend to attach themselves to personality more than to structures. If there are four centers of power, four patronage networks inevitably arise and end up competing with one another. In reality, of all these limitations, this is perhaps the one of which Bergoglio was most aware.

Indeed, as is gradually emerging throughout the world, Francis created in the Vatican a veritable “society of mutual blackmail”: key roles entrusted to prelates burdened by serious allegations or by affairs that have never been entirely clarified, who are guaranteed protection in exchange for absolute loyalty to the line of government. Those who belong to the entourage of power thus feel protected by the higher authority or by the other converging centers of power as long as they remain aligned with the power agenda. As soon as conformity is betrayed, the existence of a judicial case or a complaint is revealed through the media. Consider the unfortunately well-known “McCarrick network” in the United States or the “Lute case” in Peru.

This gives us further hope, in truth, in the fact that modernists do not have a long life. As the Gospel says, “do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, nor secret that will not be made known” (Matthew 10:26). The proposal of the Secretariat of the Synod to redefine infallibility and democratize the Church is part of a deliberate strategy of fragmenting authority, but this strategy is already structurally destined to fail. The Church will rise again through those who have known how to preserve the true Catholic Tradition.

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Quotes of Archbishop Lefebvre - On the Modernist Orientation of the Conciliar Church

• “Hence, we should have no hesitation or fear, hesitation such as, "Why should we be going on our own? After all, why not join Rome, why not join the pope?" Yes, if Rome and the pope were in line with Tradition, if they were carrying on the work of all the popes of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, of course. But they themselves admit that they have set out on a new path.” (Two Years After the Consecrations, September 6, 1990)
  

• “Thus those who were with us and were working with us for the rights of Our Lord, for the salvation of souls, are now saying, "So long as they grant us the old Mass, we can shake hands with Rome, no problem." But we are seeing how it works out. They are in an impossible situation. Impossible. One cannot both shake hands with modernists and keep following Tradition. Not possible. Not possible.” (Two Years After the Consecrations, September 6, 1990)
  

• “There are those who are for the Syllabus and Pascendi, and there are those who are against. It is simple. It is clear. Those who are against are adopting the principles of the French Revolution, the modern errors. Those who are for the Syllabus and Pascendi remain within the true Faith, within Catholic doctrine. Now you know very well that Cardinal Ratzinger has said that as far as he is concerned Vatican II is "an anti-Syllabus". Therewith the cardinal placed himself clearly amongst those who are against the Syllabus. If then he is against the Syllabus, he is adopting the principles of the Revolution. Besides, he goes on to say quite clearly: "Indeed we have now absorbed into Church teaching, and the Church has opened herself up to, principles which are not hers but which come from modern society," i.e., as everyone understands, the principles of 1789, the Rights of Man.” (Two Years After the Consecrations, September 6, 1990)
  

• “I think that many of those that left us to rejoin Rome, -isn’t that right - did not rightly understand what liberalism is and how the Roman authorities at the moment, since the Council in particular, are infested with these errors. They did not understand. If they had understood, they would have fled, they would have avoided, they would have stayed with us. But they do not want to believe these errors. This is serious because by moving closer to these authorities, one is necessarily contaminated. These authorities are imbued with these principles, live with these principles – these principles of liberalism. Inevitably, they act in conformity with their ideas. And therefore, they can only have relations with us. They begin to have relations with us – relations which little by little impose these ideas on us, since they are the authorities. They are the authorities and we are the subordinates, so they impose these ideas on us. It is impossible otherwise. As long as they do not rid themselves of these errors – these errors of liberalism and modernism – there is no way we can come to an agreement with them. It is not possible. We cannot approach them because immediately we have to submit to their orientations.” (Conference, September 22, 1988)
  

• “I said to him [Cardinal Ratzinger] ‘Even if you grant us a bishop, even if you grant us some autonomy from the bishops, even if you grant us the 1962 Liturgy, even if you allow us to continue running our seminaries in the manner we are doing it right now—we cannot work together! It is impossible! Impossible! Because we are working in diametrically opposing directions. You are working to de-Christianize society, the human person and the Church, and we are working to Christianize them. We cannot get along together!’ (Marcel Lefebvre, Bp. Tissier de Mallerais, p. 548)
  

• “I waited until June 5th to write to the Pope: I regret, but we cannot go along with this. You do not have the same goal as us. In making an accord, your goal is to bring us back to the Council. Mine, on the other hand, is to keep us outside the Council and your influence.” (Flavigny, France, December 1988, Fideliter No. 68, p.15)
  

• “But however it may be, we are convinced of this, it is they who are wrong, who have changed course, who have broken with the Tradition of the Church, who have rushed into novelties, we are convinced of this. That is why we do not rejoin them and why we cannot work with them; we cannot collaborate with the people who depart from the spirit of the Church, from the Tradition of the Church.” (Conference, December 13, 1984)
  

• “We are not up against a little thing. It is not enough for them to tell us: “You may say the old Mass, but you have to accept it [the Council].” No, it is not only that [the Mass] which divides us, it’s doctrine. That’s clear. That is what is so serious about Dom Gerard’s [choice], and that’s what did him in. Dom Gerard never saw anything but the liturgy and monastic life. He does not see clearly the theological problems with the Council, with religious freedom. He does not see the malice of these errors.” (Fideliter No.66, September-October 1988, pp. 12-14)
  

• “This new faith, it is a new religion. It is a protestant religion. That is a fact! How is it possible that the Pope gives the authorization to this change? How is it possible that the Pope can sign this constitution [on liturgical change]? It is a deep mystery.” (Conference, May 11, 1976)
  

• “My dear friends, you continue to represent the true Church, the Catholic Church. I think you need to he convinced of this: You really represent the Catholic church! I don’t say there is no Church outside of us, it’s not about that. But recently, we are told that it was necessary that the Tradition enter into the visible Church. I think a very, very serious mistake is committed here. Where is the visible Church? The visible Church is recognized by the marks that have always been given to visibility: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. I ask: Where are the true marks of the Church? Are they more evident in the official Church (this is not the visible church, it is the official church) or in us, in what we represent, what we are? Clearly we are the ones who preserve the Unity of the Faith which disappeared from the official church. One bishop believes in this, the other not, faith is different, their catechisms contain abominable heresies. Where is the unity of the Faith in Rome?” (Archbishop Lefebvre, Econe, Sept. 9, 1988)
  

• “We tremble at the thought that the infiltration of modernism, that is to say naturalism, may continue in the Church. The consequences of this veritable cancer are the most serious that the Church has had to undergo during the course of her history; that is, the corruption of the Faith of numerous bishops and a great number of priests, monks and nuns. These clerics reason like the modernists and the protestants: witness the newly published book “Bishops Speak of the Faith of the Catholic Church.” The ideas of sanctifying grace, original sin, mortal sin and its consequences, of the expiatory Sacrifice of Our Lord which continues on our altars, are all spoiled. In their place one finds all the errors of liberalism, of Americanism, of Sillonism, and of modernism condemned by the Sovereign Pontiffs. Add to that the theology of liberation which is a marxist interpretation of the Gospel—a sacriligious and outrageous misinterpretation of Our Lord. Therefore, let us not be amazed that the patience of God is exhausted!” (Archbishop Lefebvre, Letter to Friends and Benefactors No. 15)
  

• The Catholic Church will not be occupied forever by the Modernists and progressives who are taking advantage of their authority to push through all these innovations destroying the Faith. (Letter to Friends and Benefactors, September 1981)
  

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Synod canon law proposals could make Catholic Church ‘Protestant community’
Canonists warn that proposed canon law reforms from the Synod on Synodality to transfer governing power
to laypeople would ‘undermine the nature of the Church.’

Gaetano Masciullo | Oct 14, 2026
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews [slightly adapted, not all hyperlinks included from original]) — Leading canonists have warned proposals to reform Canon Law promoted by the Synod on Synodality would undermine Catholic doctrine and the Second Vatican Council.

On October 12, leading canon lawyers warned in a report published by the National Catholic Register that proposed reforms to the Code of Canon Law, emerging from the Synod on Synodality, could undermine the Church’s divine constitution. The proposals would introduce a separation of governing authority from Holy Orders by transferring powers traditionally reserved to the hierarchy to laypeople while expanding the scope of ecclesial infallibility beyond its traditional limits.

WATCH: Fr. Murr exposes Freemason infiltration of key Vatican offices, Mass

Commenting on proposals to allow laypeople – including women – to serve as sole judges in ecclesiastical trials that could impose excommunication or clerical laicization, the Dominican canonist Father Pius Pietrzyk stated: “The notion of a judicial college made up entirely of those without the power of orders is revolutionary, and the theological view that undergirds that approach would fundamentally undermine the nature of the Church.”

Pietrzyk added that the synod commission’s underlying ideology is “an attempt to separate the power of governance from the power of orders in a way that would desacralize the Church and essentially make the Church a Protestant community but with a pope.”

Another canonist scholar, Father Gerald Murray, stressed that extending ecclesiastical jurisdiction to non-ordained Catholics “is not a minor adjustment of the discipline of the Catholic Church, but a rejection of the Church’s teaching that the threefold office of priest, prophet and king is bestowed only upon those ordained to the priesthood and the episcopate.”

He warned that under these changes, Church governance “would now become a delegated power given to those who are not shepherds,” which he classified as “a radical departure from Catholic doctrine.”

David Long, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America, focused on the controversial proposal to extend the domain of infallibility to the sensus fidelium, traditionally understood as the universal consent of the faithful. According to the newly proposed formula of Canon 749, all Church members, “having received the anointing from the Spirit” in their baptism, “cannot err in matters of faith.” In such a way, the whole Church “manifests this characteristic through the supernatural sense of faith of the whole people when, from the bishops down to the last of the lay faithful, its universal consent in matters of faith and morals is demonstrated.”

Rejecting the claim that the proposal merely codifies the teaching of Lumen Gentium, Long argues that “the [Second Vatican] Council never treated [the sensus fidelium] as independent of the magisterium…. The legislation needs to address how the bishop fulfills his responsibilities when agreement cannot be reached.”

Indeed, Lumen Gentium no. 12 teaches that the consensus of the faithful cannot err only insofar as it is exercised “under the guidance of the sacred Magisterium,” to which it faithfully adheres, rather than acting independently from it.

Among other changes, the synod proposals would allow a single layperson, male or female, to adjudicate cases involving excommunication or the dismissal of a priest from the clerical state (Canon 1425 §4); give lay members an absolute majority in diocesan synods (Canon 463 §1); permit non-Catholics to serve on diocesan pastoral councils (Canon 512 §4); and remove the requirement for prior Holy See authorization before bishops delegate laypersons to assist at marriages or lead certain liturgical celebrations (Canons 230 §3 and 1112 §1).

Despite the radical nature of these proposals, canonists emphasize that the report remains an advisory, non-binding text, and would require Pope Leo XIV’s approval to become law. As Pietrzyk concluded, lacking theological and moral authority, the document “ought to remain what it is: an odd footnote in the history of the Church.”

The commission’s proposal to rewrite Canon 749 §1, by attaching a reference to the “supernatural sense of faith of the whole people” as a prerequisite for infallibility, effectively leads to a democratization and, ultimately, relativization of Catholic dogma.

Behind these proposals lies a particular ideology. Many progressive theologians close to Pope Francis, including Cardinals Marc Ouellet and Francesco Coccopalmerio, advance a “charismatic” vision of governance in the Church. According to this new model, the power of governance would derive from baptism rather than from Holy Orders, creating a kind of “ecclesiological Nestorianism” that severs the sacramental from the governing hierarchy.

According to traditional Catholic doctrine, infallibility is the charism of divine assistance that preserves the Church from error in defining and safeguarding revealed truths concerning faith and morals. The primary subject of infallibility is the Roman Pontiff, under specific conditions: (1) when he speaks as Pope rather than as a private theologian; (2) when he teaches on matters of faith or morals; (3) when he explicitly intends to bind the entire Church in a definitive way to a particular teaching. When all these conditions are met, the Roman Pontiff’s definitions are irreformable in themselves (ex sese) and “not by virtue of the consent of the Church,” as the First Vatican Council teaches. The College of Bishops is likewise a subject of infallibility, but only in a manner subordinate to the pope.

This could not be otherwise, since traditional Catholic doctrine holds that the teaching office (munus docendi) is part of the governing office (munus regendi), but distinguished by the sanctifying office (munus sanctificandi). Holy Orders renders a person especially qualified to receive the power of governance (and teaching), but such authority does not flow automatically from ordination itself. Rather, it must be conferred through a juridical mission ultimately derived from and mediated by the Roman Pontiff.

The Synod on Synodality’s proposed reform of canon law, then, appears to revive an error condemned by Pope Pius VI in the bull Auctorem Fidei (1794). At the end of that document, the Pope censured a series of propositions deemed erroneous or even heretical.

Among them was the claim that the Church’s power of governance and teaching was given by God to the Church in such a way that it derives from the community of the faithful and is merely transmitted to her pastors as ministers for the salvation of souls. Auctorem Fidei explicitly condemns such an interpretation as “heretical.” Likewise, the document rejects any reduction of the pope to a merely “ministerial head” of the Church rather than the divinely constituted source of supreme jurisdiction.

In recent years, members of the Church hierarchy have repeatedly promoted gestures, including in the liturgy, that appear to convey the erroneous notion that ecclesiastical authority is conferred upon pastors by the faithful through their baptismal charism. One notable example occurred during the episcopal consecration of Josef Grünwidl, the archbishop of Vienna appointed by Pope Leo XIV, when the crosier was passed through several participants, including laypeople, as a symbolic expression of this new understanding of authority.