VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis named Fr. Maurizio Chiodi, a heterodox priest who has repeatedly contradicted Catholic doctrine on contraception, homosexuality, and other moral issues, a consultor to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), the Vatican department responsible for defending the teaching of the Catholic Church.

Chiodi, whom Pope Francis previously appointed a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has claimed on numerous occasions that contraception is morally permissible, in contradiction to the Church’s ordinary and universal Magisterium.

READ: Professor rebukes new Academy for Life member’s ‘disastrous’ approval of contraception

In a lecture at the Pontifical Gregorian University in 2017, he went so far as to claim that some situations even “require” contraception, citing Pope Francis’ controversial apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia.

The Catholic Church, however, condemns contraception as always “morally unacceptable,” as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, and intrinsically evil.

Following previous popes such as Pius XI and Pius XII, Pope Paul VI declared in Humanae Vitae that the Church “teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.” He further condemned “any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation — whether as an end or as a means.”

Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI both clearly reaffirmed the teaching of Humanae Vitae. 

READ: Prominent moral theologian defends infallibility of Catholic teaching on contraception

Chiodi, who in 2019 was also hired to teach ethics at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute in Rome, has also endorsed homosexual relationships “under certain conditions,” saying that they could be the “most fruitful way” for people with a homosexual inclination “to live good relationships.”

The Catholic Church teaches, in accordance with Sacred Scripture and the constant Tradition of the Church, that all homosexual activity is mortally sinful and a “sin that cries to heaven” and that the homosexual inclination is “objectively disordered.”

Chiodi is one of 28 new consultors appointed by Pope Francis to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, who “will meet with existing DDF consultors to advise the dicastery’s leadership and members at regular intervals,” Catholic News Agency reported.