Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo said Tuesday that Fr. Timothy Radcliffe had denied making controversial comments about African bishops featured in Vatican media this month.
But earlier publication records indicate that Radcliffe made the remarks in a lecture, which he subsequently saw published in an English Catholic magazine.
During an Oct. 22 press conference in Rome, Cardinal Ambongo of Kinshasa was asked about an opinion piece penned by Cardinal-elect Timothy Radcliffe, OP, which suggested that African episcopal opposition to Fiducia supplicans was influenced by foreign financial pressures from Russia, the Gulf states, and U.S. evangelical churches.
Radcliffe’s column was carried in the Italian edition of L’Osservatore Romano, a newspaper published by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communications.
Asked about the text, Ambongo told reporters: “We’ve read the article ourselves, but we are at the synod following the meditations of Fr. Radcliffe, and I can’t recognize at all what Fr. Radcliffe said in the article you mentioned.”
The cardinal added that “Fr. Radcliffe came to me before we began [the session] because he also read the article only yesterday, and he is shocked that such things may have been written attributing these things to him. Fr. Radcliffe has never said these things and this does not correspond at all to his personality.”
While Radcliffe’s column was published by L’Osservatore Romano under his byline, Cardinal Ambongo seemed to suggest that the former master of the Order of Preachers and cardinal-elect had assured him that the newspaper had manipulated or misinterpreted Radcliffe’s words.
“I don't know who wrote this article, but I think its intention was to create an incident. Fortunately, this has not happened,” the cardinal said.
Ambongo but did not speculate on why a newspaper owned and managed by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communications would want to create “an incident” between Radcliffe and the synod’s African participants.
But Radcliffe’s apparent denial would seem to contradict the record of his text’s publication.
Published October 12 by the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano with the headline “Lo spirito del Sinodo e l’ecclesiologia dei cappelli,” Radcliffe’s text argued that African bishops — many of whom opposed the December 2023 promulgation of Fiducia supplicans — “are under intense pressure from Evangelicals, with American money; from Russian Orthodox, with Russian money; and from Muslims, with money from the rich Gulf countries.”
Radcliffe suggested those alleged pressures influenced the African bishops’ “firm rejection” of Fiducia supplicans.
“Never before had all the bishops of a continent repudiated a Vatican document,” the priest wrote.
The same text had been previously published in English outlet The Tablet in April with Radcliffe’s byline. The Tablet’s publication included a note clarifying that the text had been “adapted from a talk given at Stonyhurst College, Clitheroe, on Good Friday.”
Ambongo, a delegate to the Vatican’s synod on synodality, was appointed a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2022 and serves on the pope’s Council of Cardinal Advisors.
As president of the confederation of African bishops’ conferences, the cardinal was instrumental in organizing pushback to Fiducia supplicans — a document permitting non-liturgical blessings for homosexual couples. The cardinal eventually saw Pope Francis walk back his commitment to the text, agreeing in January that it would not be considered normative in Africa.
Radcliffe, a Dominican priest and former superior of the Dominican order, was appointed by Pope Francis a “spiritual assistant” to the synod on synodality, where he has preached retreats and offered spiritual guidance to delegates at several critical moments of the synodal process.
The priest was appointed by Pope Francis to become a cardinal at a Dec. 8 consistory in Rome, though he has been given special permission not to be consecrated a bishop, as is otherwise customary for cardinals.
Radcliffe could not be reached for comment by The Pillar.
