Amid polemics featuring prominent Catholic cardinals, another bishop has stepped forward supposedly speaking for Pope Francis regarding the question of admitting divorced and remarried Catholics to Holy Communion.
“The Pope himself told us that a person married in the Church who gets divorced and then remarries in a civil ceremony cannot receive the sacraments,” said Bishop Demetrio Fernandez, the head of the diocese of Cordoba in Spain, in a recent interview.
The Spanish newspaper El Diario de Córdoba printed the bishop’s words, taken from a longer interview on a series of different topics. The Pope apparently said these words when asked about admitting divorced and remarried persons to the sacraments by a group of Spanish bishops this past spring during their official “ad limina” visit in Rome.
Yesterday, American Cardinal Raymond Burke contested Cardinal Walter Kasper’s claim to speak for the Pope when suggesting a relaxation in the discipline of denying communion to divorced and remarried Catholics.