Radical change has become the new norm in Rome under the first six
months of the pontificate of Pope Francis.
The first Pope from the
Americas has brought with him – “from the ends of the earth”, as he put
it – a fundamentally new perspective.
Now conservatives in the Vatican
are braced for what could be, next week, a bigger change than anything
so far.
A new council of eight cardinal advisers – mavericks to a
man – met for the first time on Tuesday to offer guidance from
outside the dysfunctional and self-serving Vatican bureaucracy known as
the Roman Curia.
The new Pope from Argentina has tasked them with the
massive job of reforming the Curia.
The new body has been described by
the leading ecclesiastical historian Professor Alberto Melloni, of the
University of Modena, as the “most important step in the history of the
church for the past 10 centuries”.
Even allowing for a little Italian
exaggeration, this is clearly a big deal.
Pope Francis
caused a stir from the outset by eschewing the monarchical trappings of
the papacy and presenting himself as an icon of assertive humility.
But
there has been much more to him than a Pope who rejects the papal
palace, eats at the refectory table in his hostel, carries his own bags
and makes impromptu calls on his mobile to a variety of ordinary people
in response to letters whose envelopes were addressed only to “Pope
Francis, The Vatican, Rome”.
He has also been radical in
his pronouncements on Church teaching.
On the plane back to Rome from
World Youth Day in Brazil – where his final Mass had attracted three
million worshippers – Francis spoke freely in answer to reporters’
questions on a wide range of topics.
His softening of Rome’s attitudes
to gay people – “Who am I to judge?” – grabbed the headlines.
But in 80
minutes of Q&As the new Pope signalled change in many areas.
That
was a message reinforced last month when he gave a 12,000-word
interview to a Jesuit publication. It sent shock waves through the
Catholic Church.
He criticised it for putting dogma
before love, and doctrine before serving the poor. It had grown
“obsessed” with abortion, gay marriage and contraception and become a
church of “small-minded rules”.
Where his predecessor, Benedict XVI,
wanted a smaller, purer church, Francis wanted an inclusive one which
was a “home for all”.
“We have to find a new balance,”
Pope Francis concluded, “otherwise even the moral edifice of the Church
is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and
fragrance of the Gospel.”
Conservative Catholics have
struggled with all this, stuttering that the new Pope was changing no
doctrine but merely offering a different style.
Many of his comments
could have been made by Pope Benedict, they said – it was only Francis’s
tone that was different.
Liberal Catholics, by contrast,
who had felt out in the cold during the 35 years during which John Paul
II and Benedict XVI occupied the papacy, were optimistic that there
would be substance to match the style.
But it is now
becoming clear that the new Pope is bent on real change.
To some extent,
style and substance have been interwoven.
When Francis visited the
southern Italian island of Lampedusa in July – to show solidarity with
the African refugees whose flimsy boats find it the easiest part of
Europe for them to reach – he ruffled feathers in the Vatican.
First, he
did not consult the Vatican equivalent of the prime minister’s office,
the Secretariat of State.
And he tried to book his own flight on
Alitalia, until the airline’s people rumbled him.
Symbol
and substance have gone hand in hand elsewhere.
At the scandal-hit
Vatican Bank he first told all the cardinals on its supervisory board
that they must forgo their €25,000 annual stipend.
But then he set up a
five-person commission of outsiders, including a Harvard law professor,
to investigate the bank which has been accused of money laundering.
In a
handwritten document he gave them powers to summon any documents and
data they deemed necessary and told them to report directly to him.
He
has made moves to rehabilitate liberation theology – the Latin American
movement which said the Church should work for the political and
economic, as well as the spiritual, liberation of the poor.
The theology
was condemned as Marxist by the Vatican under previous popes, and its
advocates were silenced.
But Pope Francis last month met the father of
liberation theology, Gustavo Gutierrez, in Rome. He has asked one of the
previously silenced theologians, Leonardo Boff, to send him his
writings.
And he has removed the block on the canonisation of Archbishop
Oscar Romero, the champion of the poor in El Salvador who was martyred
under a right-wing military government.
Most recently, he
has upset traditionalists in Rome by announcing that he will stop
granting elite priests the honorary title of “monsignor” with its
anachronistic aristocratic resonance – it means “my lord”.
The
big question is: will the new Pope be able to institutionalise that and
the rest of his raft of changes so that they cannot be reversed by a
conservative successor?
There are two keys to that: the appointments he
makes and the mechanisms he must establish to lock in reform.
The
trend in his appointments has been steadily away from the conservatism
of the previous three decades.
He has replaced Benedict XVI’s Secretary
of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, whose chief qualification for the
job appeared to be that he was a friend and theological soulmate of the
previous Pope.
Bertone departed with bitterness, lashing out against the
“crows and vipers” who had undermined him.
In his stead
Francis has placed Archbishop Pietro Parolin, a talented and respected
Vatican diplomat, who will rebuild the Holy See’s international
credibility and be a key player in Curia reform.
In the previous era he
fell foul of Bertone and was shunted off to be Papal Nuncio in Venezuela
to get him out of the way.
His return was just the start
of what looks to be a big round of far-reaching changes.
The old guard,
who were reconfirmed in their previous jobs only “provisionally” when
Francis took over, are being steadily removed.
New men are in place in
the key Vatican departments.
The extent of the change
they are expected to usher in was evident from Francis’s big interview
this past month.
Asked allusive religious questions the Pope plunged in with
direct answers.
Quizzed about “Ignatian spirituality”, Francis responded
with comments on reform. “Many think that changes can take place in a
short time,” he said, warning that it would take time to “lay the
foundations for real, effective change.”
He spoke openly
about his failings as a younger man when – confirming for the first time
the revelations made in my book Pope Francis – Untying the Knots – that
as leader of Argentina’s Jesuits, aged just 36, his “authoritarian and
quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems”.
He
brought up the thorny issue of infallibility and insisted it applied to
judgements arrived at by the whole church, including the ordinary
people, not just the Pope.
Asked whether the Church
should drop its rule that divorced and remarried people should not take
communion, he said that pastoral care came before dogma, and brought up
homosexuality in the same context.
Not all the dogmatic and moral
teachings of the Church were equivalent, he declared.
God
is to be encountered in the world of today, he said. The Christian who
“wants everything clear and safe… will find nothing”.
Tradition and
memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas
to God. The church was wrong in the past in accepting slavery and the
death penalty.
“Ecclesiastical rules and precepts that were once
effective… have now lost value or meaning.”
The church must “grow in its
understanding” and “mature in its judgement”.
For a Pope
this is explosive stuff.
The task facing him now is to translate that
vision into practice.
That is the business that began on Tuesday at
his first meeting with his Group of Eight cardinal advisors.
The eight men come from every
continent and corner of the Church.
All have been noted critics of the
Vatican in the past.
In their home provinces they have been consulting
local bishops and lay experts about the priorities for reform.
They have
been in email and telephone discussions with one another.
Each has been
assembling ideas of his own on how to make Rome more accountable to
local churches, so that the Curia is their servant and not their master.
The
challenge for Pope Francis will be to begin the task of
synthesising and coordinating the approaches of his new advisers.
He has
said he wants to proceed carefully, and with the collegial consensus of
his brother bishops.
But, at the age of 76, he knows he does not have
that long.
On Thursday he will celebrate the feast of St
Francis of Assisi – whose name this first Jesuit Pope took.
In his mind
will echo the words that his namesake reputedly heard issuing from a
crucifix in the 12th century: “Francis, repair my Church for it is in
ruins.”
The new Pope knows he is charged with no less a task.