(LifeSiteNews) — With all of the focus on the political war between President Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV, an important item came up that should be noted. It is about Leo XIV and his continuity with the Francis agenda.

Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, the head of the Dicastery of the Doctrine of Faith – yeah, that Cardinal Fernández, responsible for demoting Our Lady’s Co-Redemptrix doctrine and the scandalous books on kissing and of erotic poetry – has given an Italian language interview to il Giornale.

And boy, is it a roller coaster.

Here’s the headline:

One year later, Francis is not underground. It is dishonest to say that Leo wants to erase him.

He was asked: “Some commentators maintain that with Pope Leo, the Bergoglian season is being erased. Is this so?”

No, was his answer.

“Every Pope has his own personal style and priorities,” he said, “but to say that Pope Leo wishes to erase what was accomplished during the pontificate of Francis is dishonest.”

“Between Leo and Francis there are many points in common; rather than opposition, one should see complementarity.”

That’s exactly what we have been saying – which is the cause of much the anger toward LifeSite from those who have defended Leo XIV. Those people are now being called “dishonest” by the prefect of the Dicastery of the Faith.

Fernández gives a great practical example of that. He was asked, “Is there something of Francis’ magisterium that today risks fading away?” And he replied like this:

Pope Leo has expressed in various ways the need to continue receiving the magisterium of Francis.

And then he gives devastating evidence to the naysayers – speaking of Leo, he says:

He has now convened the presidents of the Episcopal Conferences to resume the reception of Amoris Laetitia.

Yes, Amoris Laetitia – which allowed for those living in public sin, having divorced and remarried and remaining sexually active, to receive Holy Communion.

Yes, Amoris Laetitia – which so many cardinals, bishops, and theologians, including Cardinal Raymond Burke and the other dubia cardinals and many Catholic outlets, held to be a massive problem, and even straight out heretical.

These are signs that help us to discover that Francis is not underground.

Exactly. Francis is definitely still with us.

Fernández was asked a few questions about Francis himself. For example: “Is there a decision or text that, in your opinion, changed the way of living the Church?”

He answered with some comments about “infinite love” and the “hierarchy of truths” in ecumenism, preaching and evangelization. But then he comes out swinging against “traditionalist groups.” He says:

The effects have been enormous. To this is added the condemnation of the death penalty, to which, even today, unfortunately, the more traditionalist groups still resist.

Fernández doesn’t mention it, but Leo XIV has echoed that same condemnation before and after the May 2025 conclave. He is definitely in continuity with Francis there. Remember Leo’s line: “Someone who says ‘I’m against abortion,’ but says ‘I am in favor of the death penalty,’ is not really pro-life.”

Fernández continues this anti-trad line later in the interview. He is asked: “What is one concrete choice — even a difficult one — that you consider cannot be postponed and that could truly shape the future of Christian life?”

“That of allowing oneself to be guided by the Holy Spirit,” he says, “without fears, without resistance, without attachment” — get this — “to what we have always said and done.”

So much for what Pope St. Pius X and Vatican I taught about needing to always stay with “the same dogma, the same sense, the same acceptation.”

“But this does not mean,” Fernández continues, “attachment to one’s own ‘novelties.’ We must all make the effort, conservatives and progressives alike, because in everyone there is the temptation to close oneself within one’s own frameworks and desires, and that is not the freedom of the Spirit.”

So, basically, we have to be open “to be guided by the Holy Spirit without attachment to what we have always said and done” … but the changes will not be “novelties” … because they are guided by the Holy Spirit. Right.

I’m sorry, this is just what Pope St. Pius X condemned in his encyclical on Modernism, Pascendi Dominici Gregis. He said that the modernists hold that “Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed.”

“Thus the way is open,” the Pope warned, “to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. Here we have an immense structure of sophisms which ruin and wreck all religion.”

One last thing, and the most telling of all.

Fernández was asked what moment of Francis’ reign most impressed itself on him. Here’s what he said:

The first time he called me as Pope, and his first words were: ‘I am Bergoglio.’

Stunning. How many times have we seen people object to calling Francis “Bergoglio” and wondering whether he really was the true Pope? And yet there he is referring to himself as just “Bergoglio,” and there Fernández is praising this as the most impressive moment of his pontificate and claiming “it says a great deal about this man’s humility.”

There’s a famous saying: When people tell you who they are, believe them.