VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday appointed a dozen consultors to the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, including several individuals who have advocated for the “ordination” of women to the priesthood, synodality, changes to the Catholic teaching on sexual morality, and even one with ties to the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Pope Leo’s August 18 appointments to the dicastery include Peter G. Kirchschlager, a social ethicist at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland, who has said the Church has an unresolved problem regarding the impossibility of women’s ordination to the priesthood. Another of the pontiff’s appointees, Father Peter Klasvogt, a German priest, has embraced the Synodal Way and called for the Church’s teaching on female “priests” and sexual morality to be reviewed with a “willingness to change.”
Kathryn Koch, the president and CEO of global independent asset management company TCW, previously spent 20 years at Goldman Sachs. Koch was notably selected as a Young Global Leader by the WEF in 2015.
In 2018, Kirchschläger criticized the Catholic Church for its “inadequate implementation of human rights within its own ranks” and for its “unresolved problem” of so-called “gender equality,” especially when it comes to not allowing women to be ordained as priests.
Kirchschläger even argued that “The state must tell the Church: ‘You have a problem when it comes to equality,’ and insist that the state enforce “the universality of human rights” within the Catholic Church and other religions regardless of what they teach.
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The Catholic Church has consistently taught that only men can be admitted to the Sacrament of Holy Orders. In his 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed this perennial teaching:
Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.
Fr. Klasvogt, who serves as the rector of the Campo Santo Teutonico in Rome, has fully supported the heterodox German Synodal Way and the Synod on Synodality.
In a 2022 book he co-authored, titled Riskierte Berufung, he also erroneously claimed that in Heaven “there will no longer be priests – at least not as an office,” which seems to be a subtle call for more lay governance within the Church.
The Church teaches that since the Sacrament of Holy Orders imparts an indelible mark, priests who make it to Heaven will indeed remain priests.
The priest went on to argue that the Church is free to develop new ministries “in accordance with the needs of the times” and suggested that therefore the Church should create new ministries “for men and women, including those established through the seal of the laying on of hands and prayer.”
This appears to be a call for women to be ordained to the priesthood and diaconate.
Koch, in addition to being selected as a Young Global Leader by the WEF 11 years ago, currently serves on the board of Nasdaq, a key partner of the globalist organization.
These appointments follow a trend in Pope Leo’s recent appointments. Earlier this month, the pontiff appointed 15 new consultors to the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, which is headed by Prefect Sister Simona Brambilla, including advocates of LGBT ideology and “women’s ordination,” greater liturgical experimentation, and structural changes to Church governance.
READ: Pope Leo appoints pro-female ordination consultors to religious life dicastery
The most glaring of these consultor appointments was that of Sister Patricia Murray, a former executive secretary of the International Union of Superiors General. During a 2021 conference on synodality, she argued that discussions concerning controversial questions, including female ordination to the diaconate and priesthood, could not simply be excluded from the process. “We have to also allow the topics that people want to talk about to be named,” she said, explicitly mentioning women’s diaconate and priesthood.
Murray was also questioned about “the pain of LGBTQ+ people” during a Vatican press conference concerning the synod on October 16, 2023.
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