(LifeSiteNews) — On Thursday morning, Pope Leo XIV publicly praised a Vatican document that has already sparked one of the most serious Marian controversies in decades.
Addressing the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pope commended the doctrinal note Mater Populi Fidelis, issued under the extremely controversial Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, infamous for his books on kissing and orgasms.
Leo praised the Fernández document, saying it “encourages popular Marian devotion, deepening its biblical and theological foundations, and at the same time offers precise and important clarifications for Mariology.”
While many suggested that it was only Fernández who issued the document, the Pope has now doubled down on his support after having originally permitted its publication and signing it.
But a growing number of faithful Catholics—bishops, priests, theologians, and even the Pope’s own former flock—say those “clarifications” do something very different.
They say the document diminishes the Blessed Virgin Mary, restricts time-honored Catholic language, and effectively repudiates doctrines that popes, saints, and the universal Church have taught for centuries.
Remember what the document actually says. Mater Populi Fidelis declares that the Marian title “Co-Redemptrix” is “always inappropriate,” and it discourages the title “Mediatrix of All Graces,” claiming it is not clearly grounded in revelation and risks confusion.
That judgment has been met with alarm from some of the most serious Catholic authorities alive today.
Father Davide Pagliarani, Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X, said the document had a “profound impact” on him and described it as “tantamount to dethroning the Most Blessed Virgin Mary” of her traditional titles.
He offered a Mass of reparation, calling the text “a new attack against Tradition—and against the Mother of God herself.”
To be clear, the title Co-Redemptrix does not mean Mary is equal to Christ—and the Church has never taught that.
It means that by God’s will, Mary uniquely cooperated in Christ’s redemptive work: through her fiat at the Annunciation, her suffering at Calvary, and her lifelong union with her Son.
Popes taught this explicitly.
Pope Pius XI stated in 1933: “The Redeemer could not but associate His Mother with His work; for this reason we invoke her under the title of Co-Redemptrix.”
Saint John Paul II himself used the title on multiple occasions.
So IF “Co-Redemptrix” is “always inappropriate,” then popes, saints, mystics, and doctors of the Church were wrong—a conclusion impossible for Catholics to accept, particularly coming from Leo and Fernández.
A second refutation comes from the International Marian Association Theological Commission, a body that includes cardinals, bishops, and more than 40 internationally respected theologians—among them Scott Hahn and Mark Miravalle.
They called the Vatican note an “anti-development of doctrine.”
Because the document cuts away the doctrine those titles express.
The Commission pointed out that many central Catholic doctrines require explanation.
The Trinity.
The title Mother of God.
Transubstantiation.
By the Vatican’s logic, anything that requires explanation becomes “unhelpful.”
Third, the claim that Vatican II “refrained” from teaching Mary as Co-Redemptrix is historically false.
The theologians point out that Lumen Gentium explicitly teaches that Mary “associated herself with her Son’s sacrifice in her mother’s heart” and endured His suffering at Calvary.
The doctrine is there—even if the word is not.
Multiple critics note the Vatican document’s repeated insistence that Marian titles must not offend Protestant sensibilities.
Father Pagliarani called this concern “almost pathological.”
Bishop Bernard Fellay was even more blunt. He called the document “pitiful” and “an insult to God,” warning that it reflects a Protestant spirit inside the Church—one that cannot tolerate Mary’s God-given role in the economy of salvation.
But the opposition to the Vatican document extends even to Pope Leo XIV’s backyard—his own former diocese.
In Chiclayo, Peru—where Pope Leo served as bishop for eight years—more than 100 Catholics have formally petitioned him, urging him to reconsider what they call a “truly scandalous” and “harmful” Vatican document.
These are not academics. They are ordinary faithful—people he was supposed to have shepherded. They write that Mater Populi Fidelis has caused deep sadness among them.
They explain that on the feast of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, their parish priest found himself unable to preach Mary as Mediatrix of All Graces.
They ask the Pope:
“Can you imagine such a thing? What a harmful innovation this doctrinal note has been.”
They go further.
“Do not make our poor Mother suffer in this way… She who suffered so greatly at the foot of the Cross to give birth to us.”
When the most faithful bishops, theologians, priests, and now the simple laity all say the same thing—that Mary is being diminished—should the Church not listen?
At a time of apostasy, impurity, and confusion, the faithful do not need a diminished Mother.
They need the Woman whom Scripture calls “terrible as an army in battle array”—the one whom saints and popes called the Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of All Graces, because God Himself willed her cooperation in the salvation of souls and chose to give us All Grace and Truth through her.
