Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, delivered an address on December 12 entitled “The Mother of Evangelization: Why is Mary the first evangelizer?”
Addressing Latin American priests, religious, and seminarians studying in Rome, Cardinal Fernández offered what he described as “an extremely important, key clarification for a healthy Mariology”:
It is not that God is distant and Mary gives us that closeness that God does not have. Please don’t say this. It is quite the opposite: it is impossible for Mary to be closer to us than the Father, than Christ, than the Holy Spirit [are]. No way.
What happens is that in her, in her face as a Mother, we can easily discover the closeness of God who is the one who reaches the deep intimacy of our heart. In her we recognize that love of the Father of which the Gospel speaks to us, the love of the Father, the tenderness of Christ and the power of the Spirit that we read in the texts of the Gospel.