On Sunday, 6 September, in Haarlem’s Cathedral of Saint Bavo, Cardinal Raymond Burke told the faithful of Radio Maria Netherlands that “the Blessed Virgin Mary is Co-redemptrix, that is, she shares in a unique way in the saving work of Our Lord.” The conference dealt with the First Saturdays and the Immaculate Heart, and his office later released the full text. It was the first time a cardinal had publicly used the title that the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith had labelled “always inopportune” in the note Mater Populi fidelis, published on 4 November 2025 with papal approval.
On 7 and 8 October, at the Augustinianum, a few metres from St Peter’s Square, the international congress De Maria numquam satis will be held. Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former prefect of the same dicastery that signed the note, will speak on “the cooperation of the Virgin Mary in the Redemption.” He will be joined by Burke himself, the theologian of the Pontifical Household, the Dominican Wojciech Giertych, the mariologist Manfred Hauke, regarded as one of the greatest living specialists in the field, the historian Roberto de Mattei, Fr Thomas Crean and Msgr Rudolf Michael Schmitz, among others. On the eve of the congress, the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, will preside at solemn Vespers in the Roman basilica dedicated to Our Lady of Lepanto.
Ten months of objections
Reaction to the note began almost immediately. Msgr Athanasius Schneider maintained within days that the ordinary Magisterium, the saints and the doctors could not have misled the faithful for centuries with a “consistently inappropriate” usage. In December, Fr Serafino Lanzetta promoted a filial appeal to Leo XIV to reconsider the document. The theological commission of the International Marian Association, with Scott Hahn and Mark Miravalle, described the text as an “anti-development of doctrine.”
On 2 February 2026, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, Fr Davide Pagliarani, Superior General of the Priestly Fraternity of St Pius X, devoted his homily to the subject when he announced the episcopal consecrations later celebrated in Écône on 1 July, the feast of the Most Precious Blood. He began with the prophecy of Simeon and explained that God willed to associate the Mother with the redemptive work from the beginning, asking of her a cooperation “in a manner proportionate to her holiness.” Christ saves with his own infinite merits, he argued, and at the same time requires the free assent of every soul; Mary would be the perfect prototype of that cooperation. The choice of the date for the consecrations, with its reference to the Blood formed in the most pure blood of the Virgin, extended the same reading.
What was presented in November as a terminological clarification, a matter for mariologists among mariologists, has become the most sustained doctrinal controversy of the pontificate.
The sequence of rectifications
Critics of the note point less to its content than to the way authority has administered it. The chronology is as follows. The dicastery publishes a text approved by the Pope declaring the title “always inopportune.” About three weeks later, in the face of protests, the prefect, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, explains to a journalist that the word “always” must be understood as “from now on,” that the prohibition refers to official documents and liturgical texts, and that anyone who correctly understands the title may continue to use it “in his prayer group or among friends.” In January, Leo XIV praised the document for its “precise and important clarifications.”
No one in this dispute denies that Christ is the sole Redeemer. Burke, Müller, Schneider and Pagliarani affirm it with the same firmness as the note, and the organisers of the October congress, led by Virginia Coda Nunziante, have stated that Mary’s cooperation is entirely subordinate, dependent and derived from that of her Son, while adding that it is “real, efficacious, singular and universal.”
What is at stake
The note acknowledges that it rests, among other things, on ecumenical grounds. The idea that the creature in no way participates in its own redemption, that grace works alone and that the human response adds or subtracts nothing, constitutes the core of the Protestant Reformation and the dividing line that Trent drew against it. Catholic faith holds the contrary: the Redemption, wrought by Christ alone and with infinite merits that no one shares, calls for the free response of each one of us, adherence in faith and participation in suffering. God desires the cooperation of his creatures, and has made the Virgin the prototype of that cooperation.
Here lies the theological weight of the title. Co-redemption is the perfect archetype of a truth that underpins the whole of Christian life. If Mary, the most perfectly redeemed, the only one never touched by sin, had to accompany her Son in pain; if she prepared the Passion with Him and His Passion was also hers; if at the foot of the Cross she was the first to adore the Precious Blood that is today adored at the foot of the altar, then no baptised person can hope to be saved as a spectator.
Critics of the note maintain that a Church that falls silent about co-redemption ends up, without intending it, preaching a salvation without the cross, a grace without cooperation, a faith without the sword, and that softening this vocabulary out of consideration for Protestant interlocutors amounts to yielding precisely at the point of the Lutheran error.
From the same logic flows the connection, made by many of the objectors, with the dispute over the traditional Mass. The Mass is the sacrifice of the Cross made present on the altar; co-redemption is the Mother at the foot of that same Cross, offering with her Son the Blood that she herself gave Him. Whoever trims the sacrificial character of the liturgy and whoever trims Mary’s participation in the Redemption are, from different angles, filing away the same cornerstone: the Cross as the place where God saves and at the same time asks for the cooperation of his creatures. Burke expressed it in Haarlem with a formula that avoids any ambiguity: the Lord’s sacrifice is perfect and lacks nothing; the only thing lacking is “our whole-hearted participation in His Sacrifice, taking up the Cross each day and following Him.”
A wound that will grow?
The underlying question is whether this controversy constitutes a wound in the pontificate and whether it will tend to widen. There are elements that point in that direction. The first is the calibre of the objectors: two cardinals, the Pope’s theologian and the leading living mariologists form an institutional front that is difficult to dismiss as mere dissent. The second is the breadth of the spectrum, ranging from figures fully integrated into the Curia to the Priestly Fraternity of St Pius X, united under the same doctrinal cause. The third is the link with the Mass, which turns a mariological debate into part of a wider dispute about the orientation of the pontificate and adds to the devotees of the Virgin the faithful who already felt aggrieved by the liturgical restrictions. The fourth is symbolic: the congress coincides with the assembly convened by Leo XIV from 7 to 14 October to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Amoris laetitia. Two Romes will speak at the same time, a few metres apart, from very different angles.