Franjo Seper

Franjo Seper (born October 2, 1905, Osijek, Austria-Hungary [now in Croatia]—died December 30, 1981, Rome, Italy) was a Croatian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who was prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1968 to 1980.

He was ordained a priest in 1930 and became a bishop in 1954, acting as secretary to Aloysius Cardinal Stepinac, archbishop of Zagreb, and succeeding him in 1960. Seper was named a cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1965. In 1968 he succeeded Cardinal Ottaviani, the leading conservative voice within the church hierarchy, as head of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly [until 1965] the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office), the Vatican office responsible for safeguarding church doctrine on faith and morals. Seper made notable contributions to debates at the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II; 1962–65), advocating, for instance, that the church abandon the accusation of deicide against Jews in Catholic teaching. Although Seper had been expected to take a more liberal approach as prefect of the Sacred Congregation than his predecessor had, in part because of his less conservative background, he maintained the church’s traditional uncompromising condemnation of homosexual acts and premarital sexual relations and its opposition to the admission of women to the priesthood. He also asserted the church’s right to discipline clergy such as the theologians Hans Küng and Edward Schillebeeckx, who had called for greater pluralism on these and other doctrinal questions. One month before his death, Seper retired and was replaced by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI.