(LifeSiteNews) — Study Group 9 of the Vatican Synod on Synodality has emerged as a vehicle for one of the most direct challenges to Catholic sexual ethics after publishing its Final Report last week, and the group’s membership offers a key to understanding why.
The Final Report of Study Group 9, published May 5, explicitly challenges the traditional Catholic view that considers homosexuality a disordered tendency and homosexual acts as intrinsically immoral.
The group’s report stated that “sin, at its root, does not consist in the (same-sex) couple relationship,” but rather in “a lack of faith in a God who desires our fulfillment.”
The publication provoked widespread scandal, particularly over one of the two “anonymous” testimonies included in the document: that of a young American homosexual. The man was later identified – although without official confirmation – as Jason Steidl Jack, known for having received together with his “husband” a “blessing” from Father James Martin, a well-known American Jesuit engaged in the promotion of the LGBT agenda within the Catholic Church.
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To understand the nature of this report, however, one must look at the members chosen by Pope Francis in 2024 for Study Group 9, dedicated to the “theological criteria and synodal methodologies for the shared discernment of emerging doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues.”
Among the members, two figures in particular stand out, both active for years in the attempt to normalize homosexuality and other moral issues at odds with traditional Catholic doctrine: Cardinal Carlos Gustavo Castillo Mattasoglio, archbishop of Lima, and Father Maurizio Chiodi, member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
Francis had entrusted Mattasoglio with the role of coordinator of the group. Considered a symbolic figure of the Church in Peru, he represents a move toward the progressive liberation theology of the 1970s.
His doctrinal positions, often heterodox, have not hindered his career, such as during a 2021 pre-Christmas homily in which he stated that Christ “died as a layman,” denying the priestly character of Christ’s sacrifice; on the contrary, these positions have favored his rise. An avowed defender of liberation theology, Mattasoglio has made LGBT propaganda one of his principal causes.
For many years the Church in Peru was associated with Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne of the Opus Dei, archbishop of Lima until 2019. Cipriani stood as a conservative counterpoint to the more progressive sectors of the Latin American episcopate.
In 2013, Cipriani and Mattasoglio – who was not yet a bishop – came into conflict: the future cardinal was suspended from teaching theology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru because of his “attacks on the ecclesiastical hierarchy,” deemed “backward.” The suspension was justified as a “leave” for priests with long tenure, but in fact it limited his academic activity.
Since 2019, Cipriani has faced allegations of abuse and sanctions without trial, a matter that placed him in Francis’ sights together with other cardinals perceived as conservative, including the late George Pell, Angelo Becciu, and Raymond Burke.
On January 25, 2019, Francis appointed Mattasoglio as archbishop of Lima, and on December 7, 2024, he created him cardinal. Gustavo Gutiérrez, father of liberation theology, actively participated in his episcopal consecration, as reported by The Tablet in an article of March 4, 2019, later removed from the website.
“Gustavo Gutiérrez has inaugurated the final phase of Pope Francis’ revolution for the Church of Lima,” the article reads. “Fr. Gutiérrez, the eminent liberation theologian, had been effectively driven out of the diocese of Lima by the previous archbishop, Juan Carlos Cipriani, of Opus Dei, and now here he was, the representative of the diocese. The nuncio, Bishop Nicola Girasoli, was only too happy to oblige.”
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In 2024 he published, together with Roberto Maier and Gemma Serrano, the volume A Post-Clerical Church: Authority and Gospel, a true programmatic manifesto proposing a radical reform of the role of the laity, a new conception of governing power, and a more participatory and inclusive vision of authority on the basis of the ambiguous notion of the “people of God.”
Beside the figure of Mattasoglio, Father Maurizio Chiodi also holds a prominent role within the synod study group. A moral theologian of the Pontifical Academy for Life, established by John Paul II but profoundly transformed under the leadership of Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, Chiodi is known for his innovative positions in matters of sexual ethics.
In a 2019 interview with Avvenire, newspaper of the Italian bishops, and republished by pro-LGBT group Progetto Gionata, Chiodi attempted to answer “fundamental anthropological and theological questions” about the way in which the Church understands homosexuality, declaring:
I believe that the relationships of homosexual couples present undeniable deficiencies and differences that prevent them from being equated with heterosexual couples, thereby erasing their diversity. Nevertheless, the moral task concerns actual possibilities, that is, the possible good, which takes into account the concrete history of a subject.
To that end, he added:
For this reason, I would not exclude that, under certain conditions, a homosexual couple relationship could be, for that individual, the most fruitful way of living good relationships, considering their symbolic meaning, at once personal, rational, and social.
In an August 2024 interview given to Katholisch.de, the press agency of the German bishops, Chiodi said openly: “I believe that today it is necessary to rethink the traditional – and incomprehensible for our time – ethical considerations on homosexuality,” thus anticipating what was contained in the synodal report.
“If in the past homosexuality was spoken of as against nature, today we must ask ourselves: what does nature mean? This Latin word has many very different meanings, especially the meaning of universality…. But we cannot think of universality (the good and the law) without singularity (conscience),” he added.
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According to Catholic doctrine, however, homosexuality – together with other sexual practices – is said to be “against nature,” not in the sense of being absent as a phenomenon in created nature, but in the sense of being contrary to the objective finality manifested by the sexual function, which is designed to complement and unite with the opposite sex.
Other members of Study Group 9 include the Jesuit Father Carlo Casalone, moral theologian at the Gregorian and one of the principal promoters of the reform of the Pontifical Academy for Life in a direction closer to the “magisterium” of Francis; and the Carmelite Filippo Iannone, appointed by Pope Leo XIV in 2025 as the new prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
Although considered moderate or even “conservative” in certain circles, Iannone has openly supported Francis’ synodal program, affirming earlier this year that resistance to synodality is a sign of a “lack of conversion.”