In the weeks leading up to the release of Querida Amazonia (“The Beloved Amazon”), Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the October 2019 Amazon synod, all of the public voices in the entire Catholic Church seemed to be united on one point: Pope Francis was going to write something that would call into question the future of the celibate priesthood in the Roman rite of the Catholic Church.
Both those who supported a revision of the Church’s discipline on priestly celibacy and those who were opposed to it seemed to agree that the only question remaining was whether Pope Francis would suggest an exception to the ban on ordaining married men limited to the Amazon region, or whether he would open the door to much broader exceptions (or even a complete rethinking of the discipline) worldwide.
In the end, everyone got it wrong.