No Vatican document over the last year has caused more uproar than Fiducia Supplicans, the declaration from the church's doctrinal office allowing priests to bless individuals who are remarried or in same-sex unions.
The text — eight pages made available initially in five languages — arrived in reporters' inboxes at 2:15 in the afternoon one year ago today, on Dec. 18, for "immediate" publication. In many respects, it defined the year ahead for Pope Francis and some of his key allies.
The rollout was not dissimilar to another incident that occurred in March 2022, when after nine years in the making, the Vatican released the text of its long awaited new constitution, Praedicate Evangelium. That document overhauling the church's central bureaucracy was one of the signature reforms of Francis' papacy. With little fanfare at all, the document arrived on a Saturday without a customary press conference to explain the sweeping changes until the following Monday — more than 48 hours after the document had been released and stories published.
But if that was mostly concerned with the church's internal governance, Fiducia was an outward facing document, potentially affecting the lives of many Catholic faithful and those who minister to them.
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