Pope Leo XIV has received Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández on June 19, 22, and 25, according to the bulletins of the Holy See Press Office. Three audiences in the same week with the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, a frequency that is rarely reflected in the bollettino.
The Vatican has not disclosed the content of those meetings. The prefect routinely discusses a wide range of matters with the Pope, so nothing allows these audiences to be linked to any specific issue.
Even so, the calendar invites placing them in context. On the one hand, Cardinal Fernández is among the voices expected to play a prominent role in the upcoming consistory. On the other, on July 1 the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X announced new episcopal consecrations in Écône, without papal mandate. Two matters of a different nature that coincide in time, during days when the faithful look to Rome with special attention.
On June 16, before participants in the Eastern Jubilee, Leo XIV expressed his desire to work for reconciliation within the Church. Since then, there has been no public gesture toward the Fraternity: no official exhortation, no invitation to dialogue, no last-minute appeal.
If the consecrations take place without a mandate, the Holy See will likely reaffirm the foreseen canonical consequences, in line with what occurred after the consecrations of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988. It would be a new chapter in a fracture that no pontificate has managed to close.
It is striking that, just days before July 1, the Pope has not even received representatives of the Fraternity. It is legitimate to hold lengthy discussions with the prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith, but the absence of any direct contact with the other party suggests a way of managing conflicts at a certain distance, avoiding exposure and the assumption of risks. And the unity of the Church, when a rupture is at stake, is not usually stitched together without getting wet: it requires gestures, presence, and the will to confront tension before events render it futile.
For now, there are only verifiable facts—three audiences and a date on the horizon—and a public silence that continues as the margin for any initiative before July 1 runs out.