ROME – Argentinian Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, Pope Francis’s pick as the new head of the Vatican’s powerful Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, has said that he originally declined the position in part because he feels incompetent in handling the clerical abuse crisis.

In a Facebook post Saturday, Fernández told his friends and followers that when the pope initially asked him to take over at the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), “I gave him various reasons for saying no.”

“One of them is that the task includes the issue of child abuse, and I do not feel prepared nor trained for these issues,” he said, reiterating the point in a second Facebook post on Sunday in which he said the abuse crisis “pains and embarrasses us,” but insisted that “I do not feel qualified or trained to guide something like this.”

Currently the archbishop of…