Pope
Francis has spent much of his first month as pope charming ordinary
Catholics with his ordinary yet extraordinary papal ways and making
clear he is very much the boss when it comes to decisions as small as
the shoes he wears to where he rests his head at night.
In
the coming months, he’ll face decisions of far greater importance as he
responds to demands from cardinals in far-flung dioceses and Vatican
officials at home for an overhaul of the Holy See bureaucracy, the
dysfunctional family business he inherited one month ago.
Given
Francis’ governing style and track record, it’s likely he’ll make these
choices with an eye to efficiency, and very much alone.
Prelates
are demanding term limits on Vatican jobs to prevent priests from
becoming career bureaucrats. They want consolidated financial reports to
remove the cloak of secrecy from the Vatican’s murky finances. And they
want regular Cabinet meetings where department heads actually talk to
one another to make the Vatican a help to the church’s evangelizing
mission, not a hindrance.
“It
just doesn’t work either very quickly or very efficiently,” U.S.
Cardinal Francis George, the archbishop of Chicago, said. “Take marriage
cases: People shouldn’t have to be asked to wait three, four, five, six
years to get a response” for a request for an annulment.
Francis
is meeting daily with department heads and on Friday made an impromptu
visit to the secretariat of state, getting a handle on a government that
was last reformed by Pope Paul VI a half-century ago and was shown by
the leaks of papal documents last year to be infected by power
struggles, incompetence and sheer ungovernability.
He
has made one Vatican appointment so far, naming a member of his
namesake Franciscan order to the important No. 2 spot at the Vatican’s
congregation for religious orders. His most eagerly-watched appointment
has yet to come: that of the Vatican secretary of state, who runs the
day-to-day administration of the Holy See. Currently, the position is
held by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, a 78-year-old canon lawyer whose
administrative shortcomings have been blamed for many of the Vatican’s
current problems today.
George
Weigel, a papal biographer who interviewed then-Cardinal Jorge Mario
Bergoglio last May for his new book “Evangelical Catholicism,” said
Francis understands well the problems of the Curia, or Vatican
bureaucracy. He said Bergoglio “displayed a shrewd, but not cynical,
grasp of just what was wrong with the church’s central bureaucratic
machinery, and why.”
“I
think we can expect the new pope to lead the church in a purification
and renewal of the episcopate, the priesthood, the religious life, and
the curia, because he understands that scandal, corruption, and
incompetence are impediments” to the mission of spreading the faith,
Weigel wrote in a recent essay.
Francis’
austere style and track record governing the Jesuit order in his native
Argentina and then the archdiocese of Buenos Aires has given reformers
hope: Several cardinals have cited Francis’ record as evidence that he
has what it takes to make tough, unpopular decisions when necessary.
Bergoglio
was named provincial of the Jesuits in Argentina in 1973 at the very
young age of 36, and by all indications clashed with more left-leaning
members of the order who were increasingly taking up the call of
liberation theology. His six-year term also spanned the initial years of
the 1976-1983 military junta, which kidnapped and killed thousands of
people in a “dirty war” to eliminate leftist opponents. Two of
Bergoglio’s own priests were kidnapped, but later freed after his
intervention.
“He knows how to govern,” George said. “He’s done all those in very difficult circumstances.”
In
the 2010 book “The Jesuit,” written by his authorized biographer,
Bergoglio explained his decision-making process, saying he always
discounts his first ideas because they’re “always wrong.”
“One
can ask for advice but, in the end, one must decide alone,” he said.
Doing so means making mistakes, and Bergoglio acknowledged he had made
plenty in his lifetime.
"That’s why the important thing is to ask God,” he said.
Cardinal
Timothy Dolan of New York, who has become something of the ringleader
of the reform group, said he had high hopes that Francis would turn the
Holy See into a model of good governance given his background and no
nonsense style.
“Sometimes
in the past the curia has been an example of what not to do, instead of
what to do,” Dolan said in an interview. “We need to look to the Holy
See and the Roman Curia as a model of good governance, of honesty, of
simplicity, of frugality, of transparency, of candor, of raw Gospel
service, of a lack of careerism, of people who are driven by virtue.”
Dolan
suggested that one crucial area of reform would be imposing term limits
on Vatican bureaucrats to prevent them from becoming lifers. Such a
move would both reduce the “careerism” that afflicts many a Vatican
bureaucrat while also encouraging bishops around the world to lend Rome
their best men knowing that they would be gone for only a few years, not
life.
“You need a change in philosophy, in the guiding spirit,” Dolan said.
Dolan
said there was also no reason why more laymen and women couldn’t be
brought into the Vatican bureaucracy, particularly in the Vatican’s
offices for families or laity. And there’s no reason not to trim back a
government that has “mushroomed” over the years, he said.
Already,
Italian news reports have said Francis is mulling a reorganization and
streamlining of the Vatican secretary of state.
Archbishop
Claudio Mario Celli, who heads the Vatican’s social communications
office, wants greater communication within the various Vatican
departments, including regularly scheduled meetings of department heads.
“We
need a more synergetic activity,” Celli said in an interview. “If we
want to have a more effective service in the church, we need to have a
symphonic approach.”
George,
the archbishop of Chicago, is seeking greater financial transparency.
He is on the board of 15 cardinals who meet regularly to go over the
Vatican’s budget.
“The
little bit I know comes from finding out what goes on during those
meetings,” George said. He called for greater financial transparency
within the Vatican itself, including instituting consolidated financial
reporting.
“How do you run an efficient government if the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing?” George said.
George
dismissed speculation in the Italian media that the Vatican bank, the
Institute for Works of Religion, might be closed as part of Francis’
reform, as it’s long been a source of scandal.
Doing
so would be financial suicide for the Vatican, since it currently
provides the pope with about 50 million euros ($65 million) a year in
investment income using, among other things, assets of its account
holders.
The
Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said any speculation
about the IOR’s possible closure “is purely hypothetical and isn’t based
on any believable or concrete facts.”