(LifeSiteNews) — Amazon Bishop Erwin Kräutler has expressed his disappointment that Pope Francis did not allow female “ordinations” and married priests.

In a podcast called “Laut + Leis” by the Swiss outlet kath.ch, Kräutler was asked about the legacy of the late Pope Francis. He said that two-thirds of the bishops had hoped that the pope would allow married priests and female “ordinations” at the end of the Amazon Synod in 2019.

“We simply wanted women to have access to Holy Orders, because most of our communities, most of the small communities, are led by women. Point one,” Kräutler said.

“Point two: Optional celibacy, meaning that priests—including married priests—can serve in their parishes,” he continued. “Because to this day, we priests move from parish to parish. And the ideal is that he lives in the parish and lives with the parish. Whether that’s a man or a woman: it’s about the priestly vocation. A woman can experience and feel that just as much as a man.”

“These are all decisions under canon law that can be reversed with a signature. We expected that. Not immediately for the whole world. But for the Amazon region, the Pope is saying, ‘We’re doing this now.’”

Contrary to Kräutler’s assertion that women could be admitted to Holy Orders, the Catholic Church has always taught that only men can be ordained.

Pope John Paul II confirmed the authoritative teaching of the Church that only men can be ordained priests in his apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, in which he stated that “in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

In a response to a dubium question, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) at the time, confirmed that this teaching by John Paul II “requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium[.]”

In 2020, Kräutler had already expressed his disappointment that Francis did not introduce married priests and female “ordinations.”

The Austrian cleric, who lived and worked in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil most of his life, is a radical modernist who has repeatedly advocated for female “ordinations” and ordaining so-called “proven” married men, claiming that indigenous people “don’t understand celibacy.”

However, Rexcrisanto Delson, the grandson of an indigenous ex-shaman, told LifeSiteNews in 2019 that Kräutler’s remarks about indigenous people not understanding celibacy are “very offensive” and “very racist” to him.

“These people who believe such things seem to have forgotten the role of missionaries as understood in the past when the primary purpose and goal was to convert and baptize people – to save their souls,” Delson said.

“This Bishop [Kräutler] fails to understand that the indigenous do not understand celibacy because their intellect has not been fed the Truth of our Catholic faith,” he continued.

“Of course, they may struggle with the idea of a man not having a wife because this is foreign to them. They aren’t the first who thought this. I’m sure when the [Belgian] priests and missionaries began evangelizing to my pagan Igorot ancestors, they too were wondering why these men did not have a wife. To them, it isn’t natural.”

“That is precisely why they needed to be taught the ‘supernatural’ of our Catholic faith.”

“This is why the Church needs to focus on elevating the intellect of the indigenous instead of lowering Herself to their pagan beliefs and practices.”

“After learning about the priesthood and the significance of a priest as persona Christi, they [Delson’s pagan ancestors] grasped the Truth about celibacy,” he concluded.