Timothy Radcliffe Annoyed by Those Who Label Him a Progressive

Dominican Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe has firmly responded to those who pigeonhole him as a “progressive,” after some conservative sectors criticized his selection to open the consistory convened by Leo XIV with a meditation. In an interview granted to La Repubblica , the English cardinal laments that he is reduced to an ideological label and states that “labels are fine for jam jars, not for human beings.”

Radcliffe assures that many of those who judge him “have not read a single word” of his books or articles and maintains that the polarization between “traditionalists” and “progressives” is alien to the essence of Catholicism. In his view, faith lives from a fruitful tension between fidelity to tradition and openness to the renewing action of the Spirit, not from a radical opposition between the old and the new.

The cardinal, chosen by Francis to preach at the Synod and now invited by Leo XIV to speak before the cardinals, considers that the current Pontiff continues the synodal path initiated by his predecessor. In fact, he defines the last consistory as “profoundly synodal,” in which—as he recounts—the cardinals voted on the topics they wished to address.

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