Pope Leo XIV appointed on Monday, October 19, 24 new members to the International Theological Commission, the body that assists the Holy See, and in particular the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, in the study of doctrinal questions. He appointed them, as the statutes provide, at the proposal of the prefect of the dicastery and president of the Commission, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, and it is the first composition formed since he took office in September 2023. With the six continuing members, the Commission reaches the statutory maximum of 30 for the five-year term 2026-2031. This outlet has reviewed the public trajectory of the 24 in open sources. It has found no sanctions or investigations by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith against any of them, nor explicit denials of a dogma, but four have held or disseminated theses in tension with documents of that same Congregation: on the blessing of homosexual unions, on the salvific uniqueness of Christ, on the ecclesial status of Protestant communities, and on the obligatory nature of dogmas.
Article 3 of the statutes, approved by John Paul II in 1982 with the motu proprio Tredecim anni, requires that members be distinguished by their “science, prudence, and fidelity to the Magisterium of the Church.” The six continuing members are the secretary general, Piero Coda, Alberto Cozzi, the Dominican Simon Francis Gaine, Reinhard Hütter, Sr. Isabell Naumann, and Sr. Josée Ngalula. Twenty-two of the 28 members appointed in 2021 do not repeat, two of them having died during the five-year term. Among those leaving are the Germans Karl-Heinz Menke and Marianne Schlosser, Ratzinger Prize 2018, who in 2019 abandoned the preparatory work of the German Synodal Way; the Spaniards Javier Prades and Gabino Uríbarri, and the Argentine Carlos María Galli. According to Vatican News, the new Commission includes eight women and eight laypeople, twice as many laypeople as in the previous five-year term. The Catholic University of Argentina, of which Fernández was rector, contributes two of the new names, the moral theologian Fabricio Forcat and the Dominican Jorge Scampini.
The clearest case is that of the Chilean theologian Claudia Leal Luna, ordinary professor at the Pontifical Theological Institute John Paul II and consultant to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith since 2024. In March 2021, two days after the then Congregation published the Responsum denying the Church the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex and recalling that God “does not bless nor can bless sin,” she described the anthropology of that document as “somewhat taxidermic” and maintained that the sexual morality of the Christian tradition “needs to take some steps.” That same year she declared herself a supporter of feminism and valued that the Chilean Constituent Convention addressed the rights of LGBT+ groups. In a text on the reception of Amoris laetitia in Chile, she celebrated that the exhortation gave legitimacy to diocesan pastoral ministries of sexual diversity, although she specified that this does not mean renouncing doctrinal truths.
The Brazilian Tiago de Fraga Gomes, a priest of the diocese of Osório, 39 years old, professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul and in 2023 national secretary of the commission for the Doctrine of the Faith of the episcopal conference of his country, has dedicated ten years to the theology of religious pluralism of the Dominican Claude Geffré. In an article published in January 2026, he wrote that “no historical religion is absolute” and that the singularity of Jesus “cannot be absolutized to the point of excluding other religions,” drawing on the Jesuit Jacques Dupuis and without citing Dominus Iesus or the 2001 notification on Dupuis’s work. Dominus Iesus declares contrary to the faith the thesis of the limited, incomplete, and imperfect character of the revelation of Jesus Christ and criticizes the avoidance of terms such as “uniqueness,” “universality,” and “absoluteness.” In December 2025, regarding Amoris laetitia, he defended the possibility of integrating into ecclesial life those who live in irregular situations, “even” in the sacramental sphere.
The French Jesuit Michel Fédou, Ratzinger Prize 2022 and specialist in Origen, is a member of the Groupe des Dombes, the forum of Catholic and Protestant theologians whose 2023 document maintains that the Catholic Church and the Churches of the Reformation form “one single Church, although in imperfect communion.” Fédou moderated its presentation in Paris in January 2024 and later reviewed it in the Nouvelle Revue Théologique. Dominus Iesus teaches that ecclesial communities that have not preserved valid episcopacy and the genuine and integral substance of the eucharistic mystery “are not the Church in the proper sense,” and the Responses published by the Congregation in 2007 reserve the title of particular Churches to the separated Eastern Churches. In that presentation, Anne-Sophie Vivier-Muresan, dean of the Theologicum of the Catholic Institute of Paris, anthropologist of Iranian Shiism and another of the new members, also participated; in her work this outlet has found no questionable positions.
The German Jan-Heiner Tück, professor of Dogmatics in Vienna and director of the German edition of Communio, presents a mixed profile. In 2021 he criticized Traditionis custodes because, in his view, the break with Benedict XVI undermined papal authority; he has defended the reservation of the priesthood to men and has criticized the German Synodal Way. But in 2017 he defended note 351 of Amoris laetitia and described the procedure of the cardinals of the dubia as “subversive”; in 2023 he asked Francis to ordain married men; in May 2026 he said that a schism of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X would be “also good” for clarification, and in 2020, asked about the Catholic with doubts about parts of doctrine, he stated that “the recognition of the Creed is enough” and that the Marian dogmas are “rather on the margins.” The declaration Mysterium Ecclesiae, of 1973, admits a hierarchy among dogmas, but specifies that all “must be believed with the same divine faith.”
Other traits appear with less intensity. The Malaysian Clarence Devadass, director of the Catholic Research Centre in Kuala Lumpur, was part of the group of fourteen drafters of the final document of the 2024 Synod, which left “open” the question of women’s access to the diaconal ministry. In a 2016 text for the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, he included lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgender persons and the divorced and remarried among the marginalized whom “the rules of the Church” may prevent from returning, although he maintained, with Familiaris consortio, that doctrine is not at odds with mercy. The Korean Teresa Hyeon Soon Choi, of Sogang University, has focused her recent work on synodality and has written about Amoris laetitia in terms of love and mercy and about women in priestly formation. The Argentine Fabricio Forcat, a moral theologian of the school of Rafael Tello, one of the sources of the theology of the people, maintained in 2025 that discernment must take priority over the “mechanical application of principles and norms,” although he wrote this in reference to the memory of the dictatorship and not to sexual morality. The Dominican Jorge Scampini, who has served three terms on the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches and is part of a study group of the Synod, has written that the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification has the value of an “authentic interpretation” of the Council of Trent, and at the same time reaffirms Catholic doctrine on the Eucharist and the episcopate. Sr. Shu Chin Hu, of the Daughters of Jesus and professor at Fu Jen University in Taiwan, has used in a positive sense the notion of the “anonymous Christian” of Karl Rahner, framed within official doctrine on salvation. The Burkinabe Jesuit Paul Béré, Ratzinger Prize 2019 and dean of the Biblical Faculty in Rome, was an expert of the Synod and participated in the drafting of its Instrumentum laboris of 2024. The Italian Maria Teresa Fattori comes from the Bologna school of Giuseppe Alberigo, in whose workshop she co-edited two volumes on Vatican II in the 1990s, although her later work is on the history of the modern Curia.
In the rest of the list this outlet has found no questionable positions. This is the case of the Greco-Melkite priest Khaled Anatolios, director of the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame and specialist in Nicaea; of the American medievalist Boyd Taylor Coolman, of Boston College; of the Spaniard Ángel Cordovilla, dean of Theology at the Pontifical University Comillas; of the Mexican Julián López Amozurrutia, who in 2021 recalled the indissolubility of marriage and described the new union as “adultery”; of the German Jesuit Bernhard Knorn; of Lubomír Žák, of the University of Olomouc, who has reproached the Catholic-Lutheran document From Conflict to Communion for going beyond what the Magisterium says; of the Hungarian Csaba Török; of the Italian patrologist Carlo Dell’Osso, consultant to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith; of the Indian Gilbert De Lima, executive secretary of the commission for Theology and Doctrine of the episcopal conference of his country; of the Beninese Gaston Ogui Cossi, who presides over the Bobo-Dioulasso campus of the Catholic University of West Africa; of the Kenyan Spiritan Patrick Mwania, vice-chancellor of Tangaza University in Nairobi; and of the Scottish patrologist Sara Parvis, specialist in the Arian crisis.
The new Commission will hold its first plenary session from November 23 to 27. The themes of the five-year term have not been announced. According to Europa Press, Cordovilla foresees that it will be entrusted with work on human dignity or the family, in connection with the tenth anniversary of Amoris laetitia, whose meeting in the Vatican from October 7 to 14 ended with a synthesis report that the Pope wants to review before publishing it. Fernández proposed in 2023 to update the statutes to better serve “in a synodal Church,” a reform that is still under study. In the previous five-year term, the Commission published documents on the Council of Nicaea, on Christian anthropology, and on the care of creation.
This review is based on publications, interviews, and documents accessible in open sources. This outlet has not been able to read several books and articles by those appointed nor has obtained their version, and the absence of findings does not amount to an endorsement of their work.
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