VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Leo XIV has met with an Argentine bishop who was pressured to resign under Pope Francis after rejecting the heterodox interpretation of Amoris Laetitia.
On March 5, Leo received Monsignor Pedro Daniel Martínez Perea, emeritus bishop of San Luis, Argentina, in a private audience. The Holy See did not publish any details about why the meeting happened or what was discussed. However, the meeting itself is an important gesture, since Bishop Martínez has not received any public recognition from the Vatican since Francis asked him to retire prematurely in 2020.
In 2017, Bishop Martínez responded to Francis’s highly controversial apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, which appeared to break with Church doctrine on whether “civilly divorced” and “remarried” couples who live together with their new partner as if they were married can receive Holy Communion.
The bishop of San Luis issued a pastoral letter in which he maintained the indissolubility of marriage and said that Pope Francis did not intend to change Church teaching on marriage. The letter also acknowledged that the approaches to the document allowing Holy Communion for Catholics in immoral situations have caused confusion in the Church.
In late October 2019, Bishop Martínez issued a decree restoring the traditional practice of only allowing male altar servers and banning the use of female servers in his diocese. Shortly after, on December 5, the bishop informed the faithful that Pope Francis had ordered an apostolic visitation of his diocese.
In late April 2020, Bishop Martínez was summoned to Rome, and Francis asked him to submit his resignation for the governance of his diocese. On June 9, the Holy See announced that the pope had accepted the Argentine bishop’s resignation and appointed Bishop Gabriel Bernardo Barba as his successor. Bishop Martínez was only 64 years old at the time, significantly younger than the usual retirement age of 75. He has held no pastoral office since then.
