(LifeSiteNews) — A top Spanish priest said that the Vatican’s handling of the German bishops’ rebellion risks permanently “undermining papal authority.”
“If the Germans do not yield and Rome does not intervene,” he warned, “it becomes clear that the Pope does not govern the Church,” adding that the damage to papal credibility would become “irreversible.”
Fr. Santiago Martín, founder of the Franciscanos de María and the Spanish-language media apostolate Magnificat TV, described in a May 9 video commentary a “point of no return” in the confrontation between Rome and the German episcopate over the controversial “blessings” for homosexual and other irregular unions. He also denounced the Vatican’s prolonged tolerance of public disobedience and portrayed the consequences this could have for the authority of Pope Leo XIV.
“The confrontation between the immense majority of the German bishops … and the Vatican has reached a point of no return with a snub, with a public and notorious act of disobedience that perhaps in history has as its only precedent that famous slap that Nogaret, the minister of the French King Henry I, gave to Pope Boniface VIII,” Martín said.
He argued that the publication and implementation of the German “blessings” text despite Vatican objections had exposed a deeper institutional crisis inside the Church.
The central theme of Martín’s intervention was the claim that Rome had applied different standards to progressive German bishops and conservative prelates elsewhere.
Referring to former Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, and Bishop Daniel Fernández Torres Álvarez of Arecibo, Puerto Rico, he stated, “They were not accused of anything and they were forced to resign, while the rich Germans are allowed absolutely everything.”
READ: Pope meets Cardinal Marx amid controversy over ‘blessings’ for ‘couples of all gender identities’
According to Martín, the nearly two-year delay between the Vatican’s private rejection of the German “blessings” text in November 2024 and the public disclosure of that rejection in May 2026 seriously weakened confidence in ecclesiastical authority.
“The Vatican’s long silence, together with the Germans’ repeated claims that Rome agreed with them, led everyone to believe that it was indeed possible to carry out liturgical celebrations to bless every type of couple,” Martín said.
“If, after almost two years, a bishops’ conference has been allowed to disobey what Rome has ordered, the principle of authority in the Church is not only called into question — it disappears entirely.”
“This represented relief on the one hand,” Martín said regarding the eventual publication of Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández’s 2024 letter rejecting the text. “But on the other hand, it revealed something extraordinarily grave and scandalous: the Vatican’s passivity in enforcing the law that it itself promulgates.”
Martín repeatedly returned to the issue of financial influence within the Church, suggesting that the wealth of the German Church had contributed to Rome’s caution.
“It would be more honest to remove the crucifixes and the tabernacles and put a golden calf in their place, because it is that money — German money — that truly rules in reality. Either Rome gets serious about defending what it itself says must be defended and applied, or the discredit for the Pope becomes absolute,” the priest says with bitter irony.
Another major point in Martín’s analysis concerned Cardinal Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich and Freising. Martín recalled that Marx traveled to Rome on May 4 and was received by Pope Leo XIV in what he described as an “urgent audience.” No official statement was issued after the meeting.
Although insisting that no one outside the Vatican knew what had been discussed, Martín speculated that Marx’s previously submitted resignation may have been revisited during the encounter. The resignation had originally been offered to Pope Francis after criticism surrounding abuse-management failures and was not accepted at the time.
“Perhaps now the moment has arrived to accept it,” Martín said, while acknowledging that this remained only a possibility because “everything is secret.”
Martín argued that events after the audience were especially significant because no German diocese had publicly withdrawn the controversial blessing text after the Pope’s recent intervention against formalized “blessings” for same-sex or irregular “couples.” The priest maintained that continued “inaction from Rome” after such an open challenge would have severe consequences for the papacy itself.