It is once more thanks to the untiring Guiseppe Nardi, author of the German traditional website Katholisches.info, that we learn of the confidant statement recently made by the Brazilian Cardinal Cláudio Hummes – who is a close friend of Pope Francis – concerning the Dubia of the Four Cardinals. Cardinal Hummes is also the prominent promoter of the slackening of the priestly celibacy. However, he also has been under critique for questioning whether Jesus Christ really was opposed to homosexuality.

On 25 November, 2016, Hummes gave an interview to the Spanish news website Religion Digital. In this interview, the former Archbishop of São Paulo commented, also, on the recent Dubia published by the Four Cardinals concerning Amoris Laetitia. In his own comments, Hummes makes it look as if this resistance is insignificant and of very little weight. He says: “Without wishing to relativize this fact [of the Dubia] …. but these are only four cardinals. In the Church, we are more than 200 [cardinals].”

Hummes continues his defense of the pope with the startling remark that “the whole College of Cardinals is with him [Francis].” When speaking about the importance of accepting diversity while keeping unity within the Church, Hummes first adds:

This diversity is being delegitimized when the unity is threatened by divisions. The division is really an evil, not the diversity. The Church wants to be open to all sensibilities [sic]. The pope says that we should walk together and that we should not exclude anyone.  […] If someone wants to cut himself off, that is another case.

After rejecting the idea of a homogenous uniformity the cardinal then adds the following incomparably stunning remarks about the four cardinals themselves and their “divisive” Dubia:

The pope could be wounded by the motives which led these four persons [sic!] to go so far as to want to correct him. But, he is very calm [sic!], relaxed, and moves forward. He knows which is the right path that one has to follow. And the College of Cardinals is with him, without any larger problems. The whole College of Cardinals is with him. [my emphasis]

As Nardi rightly asks, why, then, did the pope avoid meeting with the College of Cardinals as a whole at the last 19 November Consistory in Rome?