Paglia replaced at JPII institute
The controversial archbishop remains head of the Pontifical Academy for Life
The Vatican announced Monday the appointment of Cardinal Baldo Reina as grand chancellor of the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences, replacing Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia.
The announcement marks one of the most significant personnel changes in the opening weeks of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate.
Before Pope Francis handpicked Paglia to the post in 2016, the Institute’s grand chancellor was the cardinal vicar of Rome, as the vicar also serves as the Grand Chancellor of the Lateran University, where the Institute was originally founded.
While Pope Leo has not reversed the 2019 legal reform that gave the pope direct authority to appoint the institute’s grand chancellor, his selection of Reina effectively restores the earlier structure.
The grand chancellor does not oversee day-to-day operations of the institute, but it is not a purely ceremonial role. The grand chancellor proposes the institute’s president, vice-president and professors to the Dicastery for Catholic Education and grants and revokes the canonical mission of professors, namely, their permission to teach at a Catholic faculty.
Paglia, 80, remains at the helm of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
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Paglia’s tenure at the JPII Institute and the Pontifical Academy for Life has been marred with controversy.
The archbishop’s arrival at the institute led to its restructuring, with new statutes enacted in 2019, and numerous professors and administrators removed while the curriculum was reoriented around what Paglia and his allies described as a “new pastoral theology”—a framework critics argued leaned more heavily on sociology and secular anthropology than on moral theology.
One of the major changes in the statutes concentrated the hiring of faculty in the chancellor’s office, sidelining tenured professors from the process.
Those changes reoriented the institution significantly — while once it had been the flagship Catholic theological institution studying John Paul II’s theology of the body, the changes left it with a less clear identity, apart from its apparent focus on sociology. According to multiple sources, enrollment at the institution flatlined after it was restructured.
Paglia hired controversial faculty to the institute, including Fr. Maurizio Chiodi, who said in 2018 that the use of artificial contraception could, in some cases, "be recognized as an act of responsibility that is carried out, not in order to radically reject the gift of a child but because in those situations, responsibility calls the couple and the family to other forms of welcome and hospitality."
In April 2023, Paglia addressed the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, giving a short speech as part of a debate on the theme “The Last Journey — Towards the end of life”.
Paglia explained that “personally [he] would not practice assisted suicide, but [he could] understand that legal mediation can constitute the greatest common good that is concretely possible in the conditions in which we find ourselves.”
Paglia came under scrutiny in 2022 following reports he diverted hundreds of thousands of euros in donations received by the Pontifical Council for the Family under his leadership.
Vatican officials told The Pillar that, in a May 2015 memo, Paglia claimed he had replaced the money he had diverted away from charitable purposes. But sources said that while 600,000 euros had been transferred into the relevant account, they came from new donations raised by the pontifical council, not from Paglia.
After initially refusing to comment, Paglia subsequently denied he had used charitable funds for personal expenses.
His personal assistant eventually told The Pillar via email that the archbishop “has instructed a lawyer based in the United States to initiate a lawsuit against your newspaper for the serious defamation represented by part of your writing.” A lawsuit was not filed.
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While controversy seems to follow Paglia — and his statements on hot button issues during his tenure at the Institute and the Pontifical Academy for Life — Cardinal Reina has kept a low profile throughout his rapid rise in Rome.
Reina went from being the rector of the seminary of the Sicilian Archdiocese of Agrigento to Cardinal Vicar of Rome in just less than three years.
He joined the staff of the Dicastery for Clergy in early 2022, only to be appointed auxiliary bishop of Rome in May 2022.
His next promotion came in January 2023, when he was named vice-regent of the Diocese of Rome. After Cardinal Angelo De Donatis’ ousting in April 2024, Reina assumed the office temporarily; he was next made the new vicar general in October 2024 and created cardinal in December 2024.
Reina has rarely given interviews and has kept himself out of the spotlight, akin to Pope Leo XIV’s own time in the curia and in Peru, but Reina is widely thought to be a less theologically controversial pick than Paglia.
In an interview with The Pillar during the 2024 consistory, Reina said that the antidote to secularization was “a new evangelization, as John Paul II already called for more than two decades ago now.”
Asked if the Church should adapt its teaching to the times, Reina said “the Church always listens to what man lives today. Yet, the moral teachings have a solid foundation: the teachings of Holy Scripture and what God has always revealed.”
“So, the Church does not need to adapt to the times but must act in such a way that the times adapt to the logic of the Gospel,” he added.
Just when I think I can’t like Pope Leo any more, he replaces Paglia. I just hope his days as head of the Pontifical Academy for Life are numbered.
I would like to have seen Ed and JD's face when they learned about Paglia's threatened defamation suit in the United States, and thoughts of receiving discovery danced in their minds.