Cardinal Walter Brandmüller is a highly distinguished Church historian and prolific author who has been critical of aspects of Pope Francis’ pontificate, and Benedict XVI’s resignation.

Born on January 5, 1929, in Ansbach, Germany, Walter Brandmüller was baptized and raised Catholic; his father, who was an army officer, was Catholic and his mother Lutheran. 

Brandmüller pursued his higher education at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, where he earned a doctorate in history in 1962. His doctoral thesis focused on the reestablishment of Catholic parishes in the principalities of Ansbach and Bayreuth. In 1967, he further solidified his academic credentials by obtaining his habilitation with a dissertation on the Council of Pavia-Siena.

Ordained priest on July 26, 1953, in Bamberg by Archbishop Joseph Otto Kolb, Brandmüller began his pastoral work in various parishes. His academic career flourished alongside his religious duties, as he served as a professor of Church History and Patrology at the Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule Dillingen from 1969 to 1971. He then moved to the University of Augsburg, where he held the position of Professor of Modern and Medieval Church History until his retirement in 1997.

Brandmüller’s contributions to the field of Church history are significant. He founded and edited the journal Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum and initiated the Konziliengeschichte series, which has published 37 volumes to date. He has published well over 100 works and his expertise in council history led to his appointment as a member of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences from 1981 to 1998. He was appointed the committee’s president from 1998 to 2009.¹The committee is a significant body of the Roman Curia that promotes the development and proper application of historical sciences, particularly in relation to the Vatican’s extensive historical archives, and aims to foster international collaboration in historical research.

From 2001 to 2009, Cardinal Brandmüller served two terms as president of the International Commission for Comparative Ecclesiastical History.

In recognition of his work, the cardinal has received several prestigious awards: the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany; the Austrian Cross Litteris et Artibus; the Czech František Palacký Honorary Medal for Merit in the Historical Sciences; and the Grand Cross of the Holy Sepulcher.

On November 20, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI elevated Brandmüller to the College of Cardinals, assigning him the title of Cardinal-Deacon of S. Giuliano dei Fiamminghi. In May 2021, after a decade as cardinal deacon, he was confirmed by Pope Francis in his transition to the rank of cardinal priest.

Cardinal Brandmüller has criticized the state of the contemporary Church while also proposing solutions. In 2016, he was one of four cardinals who submitted five questions (dubia) to Pope Francis seeking clarification on doctrinal points related to the Pope’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. When they received no response, the cardinals made their letter public, causing significant debate within the Church.

In February 2019, Brandmüller, along with Cardinal Raymond Burke, penned an open letter to Pope Francis calling for an end to what they termed “the plague of the homosexual agenda” within the Church. They said this agenda was responsible for the sexual abuse crisis and was spread by “organized networks” protected by a “conspiracy of silence.”

The letter was released ahead of a key global summit on clerical sex abuse at the Vatican. Cardinal Brandmuller said after the meeting that discussing the problem of homosexuality at that summit “would have become dangerous for them, because it’s evident there is a network of homosexuals within the Vatican. That’s the problem, there’s no question.”

In 2018, correspondence between Cardinal Brandmüller and Benedict XVI was published — without the cardinal’s consent — showing Brandmüller’s opposition to Benedict’s 2013 resignation. Although he had been a lifelong supporter of Joseph Ratzinger, he was critical of his resignation as pope, partly because Benedict did not consult his cardinals who are meant to be his advisers.

More recently, in August 2023, Brandmüller was among five cardinals who submitted another list of questions to Pope Francis, seeking clarity ahead of the Synod on Synodality. They requested clarity on topics relating to doctrinal development, the blessing of same-sex unions, the authority of the Synod on Synodality, women’s ordination, and sacramental absolution. The cardinals found the responses unsatisfactory.