Prominent Vatican journalists Edward Pentin and Diane Montagna decried the Vatican’s recent reception and celebration of the Anglican female “archbishop” of Canterbury as scandalous and “absurd.”
Montagna on Monday quoted from Pope Leo XIV’s address to Sarah Mullally in which he referred to “new problems” that “have arisen in recent decades, rendering the pathway to full communion” between the Catholic Church and Anglicans “more difficult to discern.”
“Of course, chief among these new problems is the fact that a woman dressed in liturgical attire is now being passed off – and celebrated by the Vatican and even by the Pope – as someone who seemingly has valid Orders when she doesn’t – first because she’s a woman and second because she’s an Anglican,” Montagna wrote.
She highlighted the fact that Archbishop Flavio Pace, Secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, had gone so far as to “bow” before her and make the Sign of the Cross “as though receiving a real blessing from her” despite the fact that she doesn’t have valid orders.
“Absolutely absurd,” Montagna remarked in her post to Twitter.
In a Substack piece published Monday, Pentin similarly condemned the Vatican for receiving Mullally as if she had valid Orders and for neglecting any opportunity of fraternal correction of her errors.
Pentin shared that Pope Leo, in his address to Mullally, said that it would “be a scandal if Christians failed to continue working towards overcoming their divisions, however intractable they are.”
“But there is another kind of scandal, arguably more serious in the quest for Christian unity: portraying something as true that is evidently not, and trumpeting it from the rooftops,” Pentin commented.
He noted that while Anglican orders have been declared “absolutely null and utterly void” by Pope Leo XIII in Apostolicae Curae (1896), Catholic prelates gave “precisely the opposite impression” during Mullally’s visit to Rome.
“From the moment she arrived, Vatican officials rolled out the red carpet, extending courtesies that went well beyond diplomatic hospitality and included gestures laden with ecclesial significance,” said Pentin, referring in part to Archbishop Pace’s bowing and making the Sign of the Cross as Mullally gave a “blessing” at the tomb of St. Peter.
He pointed out that she was also permitted to lead a public “moment of prayer” with the Pope in the Chapel of Urban VIII in the Apostolic Palace.
Pope Leo also “recalled his own episcopal motto, In Illo uno unum – in Christ, we are one” during his address to Mullally, Pentin noted.
“But can there ever be authentic ecclesial unity with a communion that lacks valid orders and promotes moral teachings at odds with Catholic doctrine, including women’s ordination?” Pentin asked rhetorically.
The Vatican journalist also questioned whether any good can come from receiving Mullally while entirely failing to address the errors of Anglicanism, which have grown more grievous over time. Mullally herself has “described herself in the past as ‘pro-choice rather than pro-life’ and supports blessings for same-sex couples,” Pentin noted.
The “cumulative effect” of the Vatican’s approach of dialogue without correction “has been to elevate symbolic closeness above doctrinal clarity,” which has likely only encouraged the Anglicans to persist in their errors, Pentin said.
“By publicly treating Sarah Mullally as a valid archbishop – allowing her to lead prayers with the Pope, bless a real archbishop in the Clementine Chapel, and officiate Anglican vespers in a historic Roman Church – the Vatican is serving to affirm her in her ecclesial ‘trans identity and error,’” he said.
“But if unity is to be real, it must be grounded in truth. Without that foundation, even the most gracious encounters risk becoming, in the end, the very stumbling blocks Pope Leo warns against, rather than steps toward communion.”
