Cardinal Gerhard Müller rejects conservative-progressive labels in the Church, calls for unity in Christ, and denounces exploitation of abuse cases to damage priests’ reputation.
Newsroom (11/11/2025 Gaudium Press ) In a wide-ranging Spanish-language interview released this week on the popular YouTube channel “La Sacristía de la Vendée,” Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a forceful appeal for the Catholic Church to abandon ideological divisions rooted in post-French Revolution political categories and return to its Christ-centered identity.
“We must overcome these divisions that stem from the French Revolution, from the Jacobins,” the German cardinal declared. “In the Parliament of that time, these right-wing and left-wing groups existed, but these are political and ideological concepts, not Christian ones.”
Speaking with host Father Francisco José Delgado — who was acquitted last week of charges of inciting hatred against the Holy See in connection with the controversial canonical investigation of the Sodality of Christian Life — Cardinal Müller insisted that Catholics cannot legitimately define themselves as conservative, traditionalist, or progressive.
“We form one unity in Jesus Christ, one Christ, the head of the Church, and we are members of one body, one Lord, one God, one baptism, and one Eucharist,” he said. “The sacraments are valid for everyone, and we are united in love, faith, and hope. This is the definition of the Church, not of an ideology or an NGO.”
The prelate strongly condemned what he described as the “instrumentalization” of sexual-abuse allegations both inside and outside the Church. While acknowledging that genuine victims “have every right to demand justice,” he stressed that “justice cannot be demanded or achieved at the expense of the innocent.”
“Alongside these real cases, we also have quite a few false accusations,” Cardinal Müller observed, noting that deceased priests are particularly vulnerable since they can no longer defend themselves. He accused “some enemies of the Church” of exploiting both real scandals and fabricated ones “in order to damage the image of the Catholic priest.”
Rejecting blanket investigations that target the priesthood as a whole, the cardinal warned against “totalitarian thinking” that treats individual moral failures as institutional or even sacramental defects. “The crime of abuse has its cause in the morality or immorality of a person, not in the divine grace of the sacrament of holy orders,” he explained. To suggest otherwise, he added, would absurdly make “Jesus Christ responsible for Judas’ betrayal.”
The conversation also touched on Spain’s 20th-century martyrdoms and the ongoing political controversy surrounding the Valley of the Fallen (Valle de los Caídos). Cardinal Müller defended the massive basilica-monument as a place of authentic national and Christian reconciliation, emphasizing that thousands of clergy and faithful killed by Republican forces during the 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — many of them now beatified or canonized — are buried there alongside fallen soldiers from both sides.
“Reconciliation in society, in the Church, in any community is not possible if the events of the past are forgotten,” he stated. The martyrs, he continued, “are the crown, the jewels of the Church” and “the first ones to invite all of us to overcome the ideologies that divide communities and the Church.”
In a clear rebuke to the current Spanish Socialist government’s plan to “resignify” the site and remove Franco-era symbolism, Cardinal Müller asserted: “The state must not decide on the value of the lives of others or the thoughts or beliefs of others. The state must remove itself from the conscience of people. The state is not God in the world.”
Recorded in July but published only after Father Delgado’s acquittal, the hour-long interview has rapidly gone viral among Spanish-speaking Catholic audiences, reigniting debates about ideology, justice, and historical memory inside the Church.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from CNA
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