ROME — Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, the newly appointed prefect of the Vatican’s doctrinal office (DDF), insisted in a recent interview he is not a Freemason or a “Soros spy infiltrated in the Church.”

The progressive Archbishop Fernández told Crux, an online U.S.-based Catholic news outlet, that insinuations that he is a Soros plant looking to advance a New World Order are “pure fantasies.”

As Breitbart News reported, on July 1 Pope Francis announced the elevation of Archbishop Fernández, his longtime friend and ghostwriter, to the post as head of the Vatican’s powerful doctrinal office.

Ironically, less than a week after naming Fernández, Francis met in the Vatican with Alex Soros, the son of billionaire disrupter George Soros, who was accompanying former U.S. President Bill Clinton on a European trip.

The 37-year-old Soros recently took control of the multi-billion-dollar Open Societies Foundations (OSF), promising to boost the group’s support for abortion rights, and has been a frequent visitor to the Biden White House.

In the few days following his appointment, Archbishop Fernández has already raised eyebrows in Rome by suggesting that the Vatican’s position ruling out the possibility of blessing gay unions could be reversed.

“I think that without contradicting what that document says, it would not be wrong to rethink it in the light of everything that Francis has taught us,” he said in a Spanish-language interview published on July 8.

“Many say that as it is written, with some of the expressions it uses, it does not have the smell of Francis,” he added.

The archbishop was referring to a statement published by the Vatican’s doctrinal office in March 2021, in which it declared that the Church has no authority to bless homosexual unions because God Himself “does not and cannot bless sin.”

Blessings require “the right intention of those who participate,” and “what is blessed [must] be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation,” the text said.

“For this reason, it is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage,” it read, “as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex.”

Although the text was published with the explicit approval of Pope Francis, Archbishop Fernández has suggested that it is not faithful to the Argentinian pontiff’s pastoral style.

The former prefect of the DDF, German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, confirmed recently that the Vatican had held up the appointment of Fernández as rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina in 2009 because of concerns over his theological orthodoxy.

Then-Father Fernández did not take up his post until two and half years later, due to ongoing concerns raised about some of his theological views.

Last Sunday, Pope Francis announced he would be making 18 new cardinals under the age of 80 during a consistory to be held in the Vatican on September 30, and among the 18 figures is Archbishop Fernández.