On October 19, Leo XIV appointed Claudia Leal Luna to the International Theological Commission. A Chilean lay theologian, professor at the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences, and a consultor to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Leal is among the 24 new members announced by the Vatican Press Office. The appointment draws attention to her 2021 positions, when she criticized the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Responsum on the blessings of same-sex unions.

This appointment is discussed in an article published yesterday by Infovaticana. The article’s title echoes a phrase from the explanatory note to the Responsum: God “does not and cannot bless sin: he blesses sinful man, so that he may recognize himself as part of his plan of love and allow himself to be transformed by Him.” The document, dated February 22, 2021, answered the question of whether the Church had the power to bless such unions in the negative. It clarified, however, that this did not prevent the blessing of individuals with homosexual inclinations who wished to live according to God’s plans, and maintained that the declaration of illicitness did not constitute unjust discrimination.

Two days after its publication, Leal challenged the text’s structure in an interview with Radio Universidad de Chile. In her opinion, the document had left “a bitter aftertaste in many people” and would produce an “epistemological shock” among Catholics. The criticism focused primarily on the distinction between the person and their relationships: According to the theologian, relationships are constitutive of personal identity, and a personalist anthropology, such as that associated with John Paul II, could hardly separate them in that way. For this reason, she called the anthropology of the Responsum “a bit taxidermic,” a pointed way in which the theologian criticized what she considered an overly fixed and abstract vision of the person and their relationships.

In the same interview, Leal argued that Catholic sexual morality still needed to engage more closely with disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, and sociology. She interpreted the Responsum as a document that “does not have the LGBTQ+ world as its primary interlocutor, but rather priests and bishops,” and that “it says nothing new about sexual diversity.” She also said that Catholics should be told “not only what is excluded, but also what is included,” and warned against turning gay people “into a banner” in pastoral ministry.

The divergence occurs within the framework of Catholic teaching recalled in the Responsum. The Catechism, at no. 2357, defines homosexual acts as “intrinsically disordered” and states that they cannot be approved; at no. 2358 it asks that homosexual persons be welcomed “with respect, compassion, and sensitivity”; at no. 2359 it exhorts them to chastity. The Responsum applied this distinction to blessings: Welcoming persons, without approving acts or unions. Leal disputed that such a separation was compatible with a personalist conception of the person.

The article also reconstructs other statements by the theologian. In a December 2021 interview with El Dínamo, Leal defined herself as a supporter of feminism: “Anyone who has studied social ethics cannot refuse the cause of feminism.” Teaching a course on sexuality in the Christian tradition, she argued that it is “much less monolithic than people think.” She expressed “enormous expectations” regarding the Chilean Constitutional Convention, appreciating its attention to the environment, gender equality, and the rights of LGBT+ people. She also said that some students had pointed out that she did not include asexual people in her reflections on sexual diversity; she acknowledged that this reality did not fit into her “mental map.”

Her public activity also focused on the abuse crisis in the Chilean Church. Between 2018 and 2019, she called for “courageous leaders,” criticized the credibility of Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz on the Council of Cardinals supporting Francis, and stated that she did not have “great expectations” for the Vatican summit on abuse. In an interview she stated that the institution had never had “a culture of responsibility” and that the crisis was not over. She participated in the Chilean Catholic University committee on the ecclesial crisis and conducted research on sexual abuse against adult women in ecclesial contexts, proposing to study the phenomenon also “from a gender perspective.”

Leal’s academic career began with a degree in Legal and Social Sciences from the University of Chile. She then earned a licentiate in theology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and a doctorate in moral theology from the Alphonsian Academy in Rome in 2012, with a thesis on anthropology and plural human identity. After ten years of teaching in Chile, in 2022 she became a tenured professor at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute, where she currently teaches fundamental theology of marriage and family. Her research areas include Christian sexual ethics, ethics of care, feminism, and narrative ethics.

The Infovaticana article also recalls Leal’s participation in the 2022 congress on the reception of Amoris Laetitia in pastoral practices. In a contribution dedicated to Chile, the theologian wrote that the exhortation had not introduced innovations regarding the “situation of sexual diversity” but had given legitimacy to diocesan pastoral care for people with dissident sexual identities and their families. She identified among the themes reopened by the text “fertility, pleasure, engagement, fatherhood, and gender justice.” She clarified, however, that “it is not a question of renouncing the doctrinal truths that Tradition must safeguard.” The contribution is available in Spanish on the website of the Madrid-based association Crismhom; according to Infovaticana, it is unclear whether Leal authorized its publication.

In 2024, Leal was appointed a consultor to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. In the meantime, the dicastery published Fiducia supplicans (2023), which authorizes spontaneous, non-liturgical blessings for couples in irregular situations, including same-sex ones, specifying that it does not bless the union nor modify the doctrine on marriage.

The International Theological Commission is tasked with studying relevant doctrinal issues in support of the Magisterium. Its statutes require its members to be competent, prudent, and faithful to the Magisterium; appointment is made by the Pope upon recommendation of the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, after consulting the episcopal conferences. This new composition is the first appointed under Prefect Víctor Manuel Fernández and brings the total number of women and laypersons to eight, according to Vatican News.

The appointment follows a meeting in the Vatican, from October 7 to 14, dedicated to synodal discernment on the proclamation of the Gospel to families, ten years after Amoris Laetitia. The final report has not been made public. Infovaticana notes that the family could return to the Commission’s work. It concludes by noting that it has found no public statements by Leal on Humanae Vitae, Fiducia Supplicans, or the female diaconate, nor a rectification of her 2021 statements on Responsum.