When
Jorge Mario Bergoglio joined the Jesuit community in the Argentine city
of Córdoba in the early 1990s, the roof of the college needed fixing
but the finances were in a terrible state and the priests could not
afford it. Less than two years later, when he left to become auxiliary archbishop of Buenos Aires, the roof was repaired and there was not a single peso of debt.
Twenty years later, following his election in March to succeed Benedict XVI, Pope Francis has much more than a leaky roof to repair, both inside and outside the Vatican walls.
After seven days in front of rapturous crowds in Brazil,
culminating in a mass attended by some 3m people on Copacabana beach,
Francis is set to dedicate the next few months to the biggest overhaul
of the Church in decades. Some are calling it a revolution.
He has assumed the leadership of a Church
whose authority has been compromised by corruption and paedophile
priests.
Implementing reforms will entail transforming the Curia, the
Vatican’s Byzantine administration.
Francis will also have to
restructure the Vatican bank, which has been mired in scandals centred on suspected money laundering.
“The Church must not be scared of renovating the old structures,” Pope Francis said in a morning homily last month in the Vatican guesthouse of Santa Marta, where he chose to live after shunning the papal apartment used by his predecessors.
But tackling entrenched power is a daunting task and Francis is still an untested quantity.
His approach to these reforms is being viewed as one that suggests quiet, determined pragmatism rather than zeal. He has begun the process by nominating three commissions – the most important being a committee of eight cardinals – to provide a blueprint for the reforms.
Andrea Gagliarducci, a young Catholic commentator, says Francis is taking an approach “typical of the Jesuits to confront and resolve problems” that was employed in Latin America.
This air of humility is rapidly winning him authority. It is also seen as a crucial first step politically, helping him to build credibility and popularity before his difficult next moves.
As a cardinal in Argentina, Francis had already planned his retirement: in room 13 of a priests’ residence in the central barrio of Flores where he grew up in an immigrant family.
Had he not become pope, he would have been living in a spartan room with no air conditioning with a storeroom as a study by the end of this year.
Instead, last month the 76-year-old pontiff was carrying his own hand luggage on to the flight to Rio de Janeiro.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, told the National Catholic Reporter that he had been surprised by the extent to which Francis had been accepted as a modest parish priest. He has visited Muslim migrants on the Italian island of Lampedusa and has drunk coffee in a humble home in Rio’s Varginha favela – acts that represent a break with the past.
“We wanted somebody with dirty boots
because he’s used to going through the sheep fields. We got that, and
we got it in spades,” said Cardinal Dolan. “We wanted someone with good
managerial and leadership skills ... It’s a little bit of a surprise
that he hasn’t played his hand on that front yet. However, I think
that’s part of his strategy.” He added that he expected Francis to
embark on more substantive reform “after the summer lull”.
The pope’s style, after his more remote and academic predecessor, has already drawn vast crowds to Saint Peter’s square and rekindled interest in a Church that had been perceived as out of touch with its more than 1bn faithful.
In his native Argentina, Francis had faced some criticism for not doing more to protect two Jesuit priests detained and tortured by the military junta in the 1970s but he has insisted that he did everything he could.
More than 80 per cent of Italians are struck by his simplicity and trust him, while 58 per cent believe that his election will contribute to the Church’s renewal, according to a poll conducted by Demopolis.
Despite this support, Francis concedes that he has his work cut out as he prepares to tackle the interest groups that dominate the Vatican, including a gay lobby. His biggest opposition is thought to come from so-called traditionalists who consider Francis a usurper from outside the Vatican’s inner circle.
A first step in tackling his opponents will be the retirement, expected in September, of Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s powerful secretary of state.
“After Bertone everything will change. It will be a gradual but complete change of all the main positions in the Curia’s institutions,” said a person close to the process.
With Cardinal Bertone’s departure, the role of secretary of state will be downgraded to a simpler administrative position.
But his departure does not make the pope’s task less formidable.
“Some people are asking whether Bergoglio’s communicative abilities will translate into the same ability in making managerial decisions. That’s the challenge and the result cannot be taken for granted,” said Massimo Franco, a Vatican expert and author, pointing out that the appointment of the new secretary of state will still be pivotal in reforming the Curia.
Monsignor Claudio Celli, head of the Pontifical
Council for Social Communications, expects Francis will follow the
approaches laid out in the Second Vatican Council
and demonstrate that the papacy is not an absolute monarchy, meaning
that the pope will involve bishops around the world in his decisions.
Francis, however, has admitted that he does not yet know how to go about confronting what could be his most delicate task: reforming the Institute for Religious Works, the Vatican bank.
He displayed a steelier side to his character by saying that the closure of the bank was an option.
Ernst von Freyberg, the bank president appointed under Benedict in February, has hired regulatory experts of the US Promontory Group to screen all 18,000 accounts in the IOR.
A bank spokesman said the work will be “substantially finished” by the end of the year.
“If the pope keeps on saying that saints did not have bank accounts then his message is loud and clear,” said Andrea Tornielli, Vatican reporter for La Stampa, an Italian daily.
Some believe this means the bank will be reduced to its original role, after its foundation by Pius XII in 1942, to handle accounts held by orders or priests for religious works and charities, without being able to carry out banking transactions.
. . .
Pope Francis will also have to tackle other powerful economic institutions, namely the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See (APSA) and Propaganda Fide.
These manage a vast and unknown quantity of properties and wealth, mostly kept off the Vatican’s official balance sheets.
These organisations have come under scrutiny following the arrest in June by Italian magistrates of a senior prelate suspected of involvement in corruption and money laundering linked to the IOR and also APSA, where he worked as an accountant.
To the outside world the most testing challenge for Francis will be to clear up and atone for decades of child sex abuse by priests and the cover-up of their crimes by their superiors.
During his in-flight press conference, Francis drew a strong distinction between homosexuality among priests – which he said was for God to judge – and criminal acts against children.
He has already approved a reform to the Vatican’s outdated criminal law code introducing a clearer definition of crimes against children, including child pornography and abuse.
Outside pressure is mounting. In a document submitted on July 1, the UN committee for the rights of children has asked the Vatican to provide detailed information on all cases of child sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy to national authorities.
This request follows a law introduced by Benedict that was watered down in the Vatican so that reporting to national authorities was not made a legal requirement. The Vatican has so far not responded in public to the UN demands, and Francis’s reform of the criminal code did not address the sensitive issue of protecting the confidentiality of confessions made to priests.
Admittedly Francis’s moves have been more of style than substance, although the Jesuits’ reputation for thoroughness and pragmatism suggest serious governance reforms do lie in store even if Francis is also likely to adhere to his predecessor’s conservatism on most theological issues.
“I don’t think he will make changes to the positioning on the Church on main themes but he will certainly change the approach,” Monsignor Celli suggested diplomatically.