Ahead of a Consistory of Cardinals this week, Father Nicola Bux, a close associate of the late Pope Benedict XVI, has written a filial yet firm appeal to Pope Leo XIV, urging him to swiftly “resolve in truth – and only in truth – the many ‘polarisations’ that run through the ecclesial body.”
In an open letter signed on the feast of the birth of St John the Baptist, Father Bux in particular calls on the Pope to build a bridge with the Society of St. Pius X before they consecrate new bishops without a papal mandate on July 1.
“Now that we are experienced in dialogue with people and groups outside the Church,” he writes, “should we not also, and above all, engage in dialogue within our own ranks, doing everything possible to ensure that none of those brothers and sisters whom the Lord has entrusted to us are lost?”
Father Bux, a priest of the Diocese of Bari and a former consulter to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, also urges Pope Leo to take three other key actions: to “revisit” Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio Summorum Pontificum that liberalized the traditional Roman liturgy but which Pope Francis abrogated in 2021; ensure that the German ‘Synodal Path’ not decide on matters of doctrine, morality and sacramental practice; and to give a response to dubia (formal questions seeking clarification) that cardinals issued during Pope Francis’ pontificate but which Francis either did not answer, or, according to the cardinals, answered unsatisfactorily.
“The faithful need to be confirmed in the truth, stability and substantial immutability of the faith,” Father Bux writes, adding that they “must be able to hear from the Successor of Peter, after more than a decade of confusion, that the Holy Spirit does indeed make all things new, but in the sense that He brings them to their final (novus) fulfilment, in harmony – and not in contrast – with what has been inspired to date.”
“Please act swiftly, Holy Father, I implore you,” Father Bux writes in closing. “Let us not allow the underlying schism to become irreparable.”
Continue reading at Edward Pentin Substack