Though presented as a pastoral initiative, this move reflects a deeper realignment within the Italian episcopate—a shift that mirrors wider European trends toward ecclesial reconciliation with secular liberalism. While technically not an official pronouncement of the Italian bishops, the document serves as a guiding framework for future decisions and pastoral actions within the Italian Catholic Church.
The Assembly of the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI), scheduled for November 2025, will receive the document for reflection, debate, and potentially for revisions and pastoral directives. In short, it marks a significant starting point.
“Once the Assembly has released the text with its vote, it is now the task of the pastors to take it up in full, identify priorities, and engage both old and new forces to give substance to the words,” said Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, president of the Italian bishops.
This drift had, in some ways, already been foreshadowed. Just days before the vote, bishop Francesco Savino—vice president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference for Southern Italy—had offered a troubling preview of the new direction.
In an interview, the neo-modernist bishop called for the “courage to speak the truth,” even when that truth aligns with LGBT demands and progressive social causes. His words—this time, regrettably, devoid of ambiguity—outlined the ideological framework within which the vote would later take place. Three aspects of Savino’s interview stand out and warrant deeper reflection.
First, the attitude of those who perceive themselves as ‘politically incorrect’ even as they repeat, with suggestive language, the slogans of the world. It’s a curious paradox: they claim to challenge conventions, yet align perfectly with the prevailing agenda of the moment. This pose of the ‘misunderstood prophet’—which today captivates many prelates—is, in truth, a form of spiritual worldliness, the most subtle and dangerous kind, because it is disguised as pastoral zeal. It is no longer the Church evangelizing the world, but the world catechizing the Church.
Second, the claim that “dogmas are endpoints, not starting points” reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of doctrine. In the Catholic faith, dogma is not a provisional stage in religious thought, but the definitive formulation of a revealed truth—known ubique, semper et ab omnibus (“everywhere, always, and by all”). To say that it evolves is to deny the supernatural character of Revelation: faith is thereby reduced to sentiment, doctrine to historical language, and the Church is transformed into a social laboratory.
Third—and perhaps most serious—is the explicit acceptance of the idea that homosexual persons “have a right to a sexual life,” and that sin no longer exists where there is gratification, pleasure, or simply love. The authority of Sacred Scripture is openly denied by this Catholic bishop, who calls for a revision and rewriting of Christian anthropology and even of the Catechism itself.
The endpoint of this trajectory is not hard to discern: the dissolution of the concept of the family as a stable union between a man and a woman open to life, replaced by a purely affective, variable vision devoid of natural and sacramental roots.
The final outcome is consistent: if the family is no longer the foundation of society, then only the State remains as the sole guarantor of the common good and moral order. The Church, stripped of its prophetic voice, becomes a mere courtier of history. If sin no longer exists, then there is no longer a distinction between good and evil—at which point the Church is reduced to a paramasonic and humanist association.
It is no surprise that Savino goes so far as to praise Italian President Mattarella as an “example of faith and democracy” while criticizing Trump: a sign that faith is being bent to serve mass-media ideology, rather than assessing the outcomes of certain democratic models objectively and in light of Catholic doctrine.
But let us return to the CEI document, titled Leaven of Peace and Hope. The general votes show broad consensus for the approval of each section and of the entire text, with a high number of favorable votes relative to the total—an overwhelming majority. According to the CEI’s vice president for Northern Italy, Bishop Erio Castellucci, “the division between those who dream of a pure and simple revival of Christendom, now definitively gone, and those who instead seek an ecclesial posture suited to today’s society, creates tensions and misunderstandings that are harmful to communion and mission.”
Starting from this thoroughly demagogic premise, 900 participants in the Italian synod—including diocesan bishops, lay and religious delegates, as well as official invitees from various ecclesial bodies and representatives of pastoral realities across the country—cast their votes.
Overall, the Document gives the impression of being a significant early signal of the Italian Church’s alignment with the German-Belgian synodal axis. To be fair, as Bishop Antonio Suetta—one of the main critical voices regarding the Document—has stated, “at every level of the process, the participants still represent a minority portion compared to the faithful in Italy.”
Among the most problematic proposals in this text is the issue of including “homo-affective” individuals in the life of the Church. In the spirit of Pope Francis’s motto todos, todos, todos—a phrase dear to Cardinal Zuppi—the Synod invites local dioceses to “overcome the discriminatory attitude sometimes found in ecclesial and societal settings” and to commit to “promoting the recognition and accompaniment of homo-affective and transgender persons.” This is based on the assertion by the Italian bishops that “the gaze of faith avoids rigid categories.”
Yet, in the face of the rightful and necessary call to offer spiritual accompaniment regardless of sexual orientation, the bishops’ document reveals two serious shortcomings: its terminology and the solutions it proposes.
First and foremost, the use of terms such as “recognition” and “transgender” reveals an ideological concession. “Recognition” evokes the political demands typical of LGBT movements, while “transgender” belongs to the vocabulary of a worldview that denies the anthropological truth of the human person, created male and female. Christian faith teaches that sexual identity is not a construct but a real datum—an expression of the unity of soul and body willed by God. The correct term would be dysphoria, referring to psychological conditions that call for welcome and care, not ideological framing or instrumentalization as weapons of hatred.
The Catholic Magisterium has always taught that every sexual act lacking openness to life and occurring outside the marriage between a man and a woman is contrary to natural law. To condemn the act does not mean to reject the person, for the person is far more than their life—even more than their sexual identity.
A particular concern also arises from the proposal to “support through prayer and reflection” civil observances against “violence, gender discrimination, homophobia, and transphobia.” While commendable in its intent to promote respect for every person, such wording opens the door to serious ambiguities: in many cases, these observances are organized or endorsed by entities that promote anthropological views incompatible with Catholic doctrine and culminate in homo-celebratory events such as Gay Pride.
Diocesan support for such initiatives would therefore be not only inappropriate but scandalous, as it would confuse the faithful and appear as an implicit endorsement of ideologies that deny the natural and divine truth of the human person.
The document conflates two distinct levels: on the one hand, personal and pastoral welcome, which is always necessary; on the other, the approval or promotion of ideologies incompatible with the faith. Ambiguous and theologically uncertain language is never neutral; it breeds confusion and division. Thus, instead of building communion, it fosters disorientation among the faithful and unsettles the clergy. The Catholic Church, in Italy as elsewhere, risks being torn apart from within—not by external persecution, but by internal dissolution.
The Church must continue to love sinners, but it must reject and condemn sin; it must accompany individuals, but reject ideologies that distort the truth about man, about the family, about community, and about God. Only in this way can it truly be a leaven of peace and hope.