Cardinal Víctor Fernández urges humility and divine awareness at the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s plenary in Vatican City.
Newsroom (27/01/2026 Gaudium Press ) At the opening of the Plenary Assembly of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) on Tuesday, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández issued a profound invitation to the Church’s theological leaders: approach the pursuit of truth with “intellectual humility.” His meditation, titled “Do Not Ask the Light, but the Fire,” drew from the spiritual legacy of St. Bonaventure and sought to rekindle within the Church a reverent awareness of the limits of human understanding.
“Recently, while in prayer,” said the Cardinal Prefect, “I have felt a strong call to intellectual humility, recalling those ancient words: ubi humilitas, ibi sapientia—where there is humility, there is wisdom.”
The meditation, delivered in the Dicastery’s plenary hall, reflected on the perennial tension between faith and intellect. Cardinal Fernández reminded participants that while God endowed humanity with the universal capacity for thought, no person can ever possess “exhaustive knowledge or a comprehensive perception of reality.” Even amid rapid advances in technology and science, he warned that “it is impossible for a human mind to be aware of reality in its totality and in every one of its aspects. This is possible only for God.”
The Argentine prelate underscored that even a fragment of creation defies full comprehension unless grasped within the context of the whole. “We are incapable,” he said, “of interpreting all the meanings and nuances of a reality, a person, a historical moment, or a truth.”
Cardinal Fernández cautioned that when intellectual humility is abandoned, humanity falls prey to tragic self-deception. He linked this loss of perspective to the “terrible deceptions” that fueled some of history’s gravest injustices—including the excesses of the Inquisition, the world wars, the Shoah, and current massacres in regions such as Gaza—each justified by distorted reasoning.
Echoing the spirit of Pope Leo XIII—whose apostolic call for mutual pursuit of truth continues to guide the Church’s teaching office—Cardinal Fernández reminded those present that “no one possesses the whole truth; we must all humbly seek it together.” He urged theologians and Church officials to cultivate prayerful silence and openness, lest they allow authority to obscure perspective.
“In a place such as this,” he noted, “where we have the possibility of giving authoritative answers, of writing documents that become part of the Ordinary Magisterium, and even of correcting and condemning, the risk of losing the breadth of our perspective is greater.” To safeguard against this, he proposed rediscovering “that healthy realism proposed by the Church’s great sages and mystics,” who understood truth as something both divine and relational.
The Cardinal concluded his meditation by returning to St. Bonaventure’s image of divine fire. Inviting all members of the Dicastery to join him in prayer, he asked that they seek “the gift of interior silence,” so that their work may be guided not merely by intellect but by a spiritual experience of the mystery they seek to serve.
- Raju Hasmukh with files
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