Leo XIV Appoints Italian bishop: "Almost Everything Divides Me From Traditional Catholics"
Born in Alfonsine, Italy, in 1976, he was ordained a priest in 2003 and has served as a parish priest, rector of the diocesan seminary and vicar general of the diocese.
Closed Seminary Is "Excellent Starting Point"
As rector of the seminary, he wrote in 2024 for the 70 anniversary of the large seminary building in Faenza. The seminarians now study in Bologna. The building is called the 'former seminary' and used as a library, a school, a workplace and an art space, and has become a "secular place".
For Monsignor Morandi, this was an "excellent starting point", as from that moment on, things were "no longer tainted by clerical and collegial imagery or clouded by a curtain of incense."
Identification with the Synodal Process
Monsignor Morandi took part in the Italian Church’s national synodal assembly in Rome. In a diocesan article from 2025, he emphasised the need for courage, training, and shared responsibility.
He wants a church reform that is "a journey, not a recipe".
Strange Ideas of "Touching Jesus"
In a January 2025 YouTube speech (article's picture) about the body as a place of encounter, Monsignor Morandi asked if we can touch Christ: 'Because otherwise, he remains merely a thought, a theory, and God is not just a thought.'
"I think each of us would want to see Jesus, his body; hear his living voice; look into his eyes; smell the scent of his body; embrace him; and be with him."
"If we don't desire this, it's not the end of the world, but we may have lost sight of our faith and need to reconnect with it, because it's natural and good to want physical contact with the Lord Jesus and to feel him in our flesh."
Talking about Mary Magdalene who wanted to touch the risen Christ, Monsignor Morandi used psychological and emotional language such as "frustration", "desire that must not be suppressed", "not something to be suffocated", and "a force that must be put into circulation".
"It is not energy to be blocked, but energy to be redirected."
Rational Rubricism Is Allegedly Cold
In another video on YouTube from 4 February 2026 about the liturgy, he said that celebrating the liturgy as a show and spectacle is "water to the mill of that neo-purity, objectivist view of the rite promoted by many traditionalist Catholics, from whom almost everything divides me".
He positioned himself between "two temptations: emotional seduction and cold rational rubricism".
According to MessainLatino.it, the diocese of Faenza-Modigliana has no Mass in the Roman rite.
#newsUirozcpuob