As an avid football fan, the pope’s right-hand man, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, knows better than most that in the end it is the result that counts.No one, though, expected Pope Benedict XVI’s new secretary of state to be quite so goal-minded as to bring performance-related pay to the Vatican. But he did.
A recent statement said a meeting presided over by the cardinal -- effectively the pope’s prime minister -- agreed on the introduction “into the Vatican pay system of an element of incentive and remuneration that takes account of factors such as dedication, professionalism, productivity and politeness”.
The conditions will not apply to priests, bishops, monks and nuns, who form the papal administration, but to lay workers. About 2 600 people are employed in the Vatican, which has a post office, a supermarket, a railway station, acres of high-maintenance gardens, museums and a newspaper. It also runs a fire brigade, police force and court system.
Traditionally Vatican salaries have been modest, with basic pay ranging from about £11 650 (about R163 591) to £20 600 (about R289 268). But it is tax-free, often boosted by supplements and some employees get subsidised housing.
Meritocracy, however, is entirely new, not least because Catholic social doctrine is averse to neo-liberalism.
The Vatican viewed the ideas espoused by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the Eighties as leading to an amoral materialism not much better than communism.
The system took effect on January 1. But, characteristically for an institution that “thinks in centuries”, it will be introduced only gradually.
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