Mgr Würtz appointed in Eichstätt: the doctrinal signal that disturbs

Pope Leon XIV has just appointed Mgr Christian Würtz, who is in favor of blessing same-sex couples and a signatory of the contested documents of the German Synodal Path, to head the diocese of Eichstätt. A few weeks after the Radcliffe affair, the question posed in Rome becomes cumulative: what is the doctrinal line, and who upholds it?

The fact

Pope Leon XIV has appointed Mgr Christian Würtz as the new ordinary bishop of Eichstätt (Bavaria). According to LifeSiteNews (July 7, 2026), Mgr Würtz had approved several contested documents from the German Synodal Path in Rome, particularly those that questioned Catholic teaching on homosexuality, and had publicly defended, in the wake of Fiducia supplicans (Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, December 18, 2023), the possibility of blessing same-sex couples. He would have also suggested that a stable homosexual relationship did not necessarily constitute a "serious fault."

Our reading

The letter of the magisterium has not changed. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 2357) qualifies homosexual acts as "intrinsically disordered." The declaration Persona humana (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, December 29, 1975, no. 8) and the Letter on the pastoral care of homosexual persons (CDF, October 1, 1986, no. 3) recall that they can in no case be approved. Fiducia supplicans itself specified that no pastoral blessing could ratify the relationship as such. The question raised by the appointment of Mgr Würtz is therefore clear: does Rome appoint pastors who, in their public statements, teach against the Catechism? Cumulatively with the Radcliffe affair, the sequence is beginning to form a case. The DDF, chaired by Cardinal Fernández, will have to speak.

To ponder

Pastoral charity towards homosexual persons is an absolute duty. Doctrinal complacency, a betrayal. Pray for Leon XIV and for the episcopal body, so that the clarity of the magisterium is defended with courage.