Daniel Fernández Torres

In February 2022, Fernandez wrote to Ghaleb Moussa Abdalla Bader, the apostolic delegate to Puerto Rico, stating that because he had not been provided with sufficient justification, he would not resign his see. On 7 March, Fernández learned that his removal would be announced on 9 March.

On 9 March 2022, Pope Francis removed him as bishop of Arecibo. The announcement by the Holy See Press Office, as is customary in such cases, provided no explanation.

In an interview conducted on 19 May 2022, Pope Francis stated that the diocese of Arecibo "[had] been in conflict for years."

Fernández published a statement on August 17, 2021, in which he took the position that a Catholic could have a conscientious objection to vaccination against COVID-19 and permitted priests and deacons of his diocese to sign letters of conscientious objection if requested to do so.

Fernández did not sign an August 24, 2021, joint statement by the other bishops of Puerto Rico that affirmed an "ethical duty to be vaccinated" against Covid-19, announced the separation of the vaccinated and unvaccinated during the distribution of Communion, and advised those unvaccinated not to participate in person in other Church activities. The bishops' statement said they did "not see how a conscientious objection can be invoked from Catholic morality" against the vaccination program.

Fernández was first asked to resign his position as bishop on 1 October 2021.

Fernández opted not to send seminarians from his diocese to the Interdiocesan Seminary of Puerto Rico when it was approved by the Vatican in March 2020.

Fernández was the only one of Puerto Rico's bishops not to sign several other joint statements by the bishops of Puerto Rico, including one on restricting the celebration of traditional forms of the Mass. Conversely, in December 2020, he wrote his own letter to the incoming governor of Puerto Rico about the problem of violence against women. He said that "gender ideology...extrapolates the class struggle from Marxism to the context family life...to convert relations between the sexes...into a struggle of sexual classes where the woman is always the oppressed, just for being a woman, and the man the oppressor, just for being a man." He said the outgoing government had waged war on religion in the name of women's liberation and he called for a rejection of the view that counts religion and the family among the social institutions to blame for the victimization of women in society.

In July 2018, Cardinal Fernando Filoni, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, appointed Fernández to a five-year term as director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in Puerto Rico.

In 2014, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced that it had conducted an investigation into complaints of sexual against Fernández and dismissed the case. Fernández had said the complaints were motivated by opposition to his pursuit of priests accused on sexual abuse. By then he had removed six of his priests from active ministry. In 2014, he sued unsuccessfully to deny government investigators access to additional information about cases of sexual abuse, claiming the diocese had provided sufficient detail and feared the identity of those making complaints might be revealed.

Pope Benedict XVI named Fernández bishop of Arecibo on September 24, 2010, and he was installed there on October 3.

In a 2009 letter to Puerto Rico’s apostolic delegate, Archbishop Nieves recommended that Fernández be transferred to a U.S. diocese rather than become bishop of Arecibo, alleging that Fernández caused “friction” within Puerto Rico's episcopal conference, displayed "rigidity," and rarely socialized with priests of the San Juan archdiocese.

Fernández was nominated an auxiliary bishop for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Juan by Pope Benedict XVI on February 14, 2007. On April 27, Fernández was consecrated a bishop by Archbishop Roberto González Nieves. Bishops Iñaki Mallona Txertudi and Ulises Aurelio Casiano Vargas served as his co-consecrators.

Daniel Fernández Torres (born April 27, 1964) is a Puerto Rican prelate of the Catholic Church who was the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arecibo from 2010 until his removal by Pope Francis in 2022. He spent the years 2007 to 2010 as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Juan.

Fernández was born into a Puerto Rican family in Chicago, Illinois, on April 27, 1964. He earned a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering at the University of Puerto Rico. He then studied at the international seminary (Colegio Eclesiástico Internacional Bidasoa) in Pamplona, Spain. From 1996 to 1998 he studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, obtaining his licentiate in dogmatic theology. He was ordained a priest for the diocese of Arecibo on January 7, 1995. He then fulfilled assignments as parish vicar, bishop's representative to the council of seminaries, rector of the Seminary "Jesus Maestro", director of pastoral services for youth, dean of the Major Seminary of San Juan, and parish priest at Our Lady of Carmen in Arecibo.