Pope-toons
In wide-ranging interview, Pope Francis sets vision for papacy
File under: Will wonders never cease…
By Elizabeth Tenety
In an extensive interview with Jesuit publications released Thursday, Pope Francis set the framework for his papacy, calling for reform of both the attitude and the structure of the church, and addressing head-on the criticism that he has not talked enough about abortion, homosexuality and contraception.
The leader of the global Catholic Church chided what he saw as the tendency of some church leaders to focus on “small-minded rules” and instead insisted that “the church’s ministers must be merciful.” Francis said, “the people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.”
Reflecting on the response to his comment ‘Who am I to judge?‘ on homosexuality, made during his return trip from World Youth Day in August, Francis elaborated, “Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person? …. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy.”
The pope also addressed some of the controversial topics inside the church, including homosexuality, the role of women, his view of a need for reform and a tendency toward legalism.
On abortion, gay marriage and contraception:
“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.
On women’s leadership:
“We must therefore investigate further the role of women in the church. We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman. Only by making this step will it be possible to better reflect on their function within the church. The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions. The challenge today is this: to think about the specific place of women also in those places where the authority of the church is exercised for various areas of the church.”
On doubt:
“Yes, in this quest to seek and find God in all things there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good. For me, this is an important key. If one has the answers to all the questions—that is the proof that God is not with him.”
On legalism:
“If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing. Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God. Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists—they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies.”
On how he sees himself:
“Yes, perhaps I can say that I am a bit astute, that I can adapt to circumstances, but it is also true that I am a bit naïve. Yes, but the best summary, the one that comes more from the inside and I feel most true is this: I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.”
Complete Article HERE!
Holy smoke! Take the Catholic church gay art tour
With the Pope’s recent statements about homosexuality, the time is right for the Catholic church to take pride in its gay artists
By Jonathan Jones
The Pope has uttered some common sense words about homosexuality – and about time, too. While stopping well short of a full recognition of gay rights, his declaration that he does not “judge” is at least the start of a better approach by the Catholic church.
If Pope Francis wants to think more about this issue, he could do worse than take a tour of churches and galleries in Rome and the Vatican where, for centuries, gay artists have created the glories of the church.
In the Vatican museum he should contemplate Leonardo da Vinci’s St Jerome in the Desert. An ascetic sits in anguished thought in a rocky wilderness in this unfinished masterpiece. It is a great, introspectively spiritual work of religious art whose creator was well known for his love of young men. Leonardo surrounded himself with good-looking assistants and painted a subversively gay icon of male beauty, his bronzed Saint John the Baptist. When da Vinci was in his 20s, he was formally accused of sodomy.
Brooding on these facts, the Pope might walk into the Pauline Chapel, to look upon Michelangelo’s frescoes there. This chapel is in a private part of the Apostolic Palace not open to the public, but I don’t think the Pope would find entry difficult. There, looking at the suffering of the saints, he might consider how Michelangelo courageously expressed his love for men, even as he created some of the most eloquent art of the church.
Is there no escape from this issue? Remembering that some art historians deny the so-called “calumny” that Caravaggio and his clerical patrons were gay, perhaps the Pope might visit the Roman church of San Luigi dei Francesi to look on this master’s paintings of St Matthew. But the demons of desire cannot be suppressed. The naked male flesh in Caravaggio’s paintings tells its own story. By the time Caravaggio came to Rome in the 1590s, Leonardo and Michaelangelo – not to mention the aptly named Italian painter Il Sodoma – had already blazed a gay trail through the art of the Holy City. Caravaggio made art dangerous and exciting again by taking that homosexual impulse to new extremes.
The history of art is inseparable from the history of sexuality. Artists were adventurous characters in the past just as they are today. To make great art you have to take great risks. The Catholic church in its golden age knew this, and it commissioned the boldest and best, whatever the artist’s personal lives.
Perhaps the honesty of Pope Francis will renew art history, for pious timidity blunts understanding of great art. In particular, the myth that gay sex did not exist in the past, or was too risky, or could not be imagined, is nonsense. By the 18th century, gay clubs existed across Europe. The gay scene in Georgian London was intense. Is it really plausible that all this was going on in 1700 but unimaginable in Caravaggio’s Rome in 1600?
It is daft to deny the obvious homoeroticism of Leonardo or Caravaggio, and sophistry to claim that it’s irrelevant to their art. The British Museum is leading the way by drawing attention to the gay content of its collections. The Pope should urge the Vatican to do the same. Let the church take pride in its gay artists.
Complete Article HERE!
Reformist priest praises pope’s new tone but wants more
By Mary Wisniewski
An Austrian priest who has stirred controversy in Europe with his challenge to Catholic church teachings on taboo topics suggested on Wednesday that women should be allowed to become priests and said that gays need justice, not just mercy.
Father Helmut Schuller, who has been banned by American bishops from speaking in Catholic churches while on a tour of the United States that began in mid-July, welcomed recent remarks by Pope Francis on gay rights, but said discussion could go further.
Schuller, in a telephone interview, said the pope’s words were a “good opener” and gay people seem to be happy there’s a friendlier tone from the church than in the past.
Schuller, leader of an Austrian priest group known for its “Call to Disobedience” challenging church teachings on taboo topics such as the ordination of women and priests marrying, has been drawing enthusiastic crowds during a 15-city U.S. tour that began in New York in mid-July and starts its West Coast leg on Wednesday.
The pope raised hopes of a softening of Catholic church opposition to gay rights when he spoke to reporters during his return from a visit to Brazil this week. Addressing the issue of gay clergy, Francis said, “Who am I to judge?” He also reaffirmed church teaching that homosexual acts are a sin.
Responding to the pope’s remarks, Schuller said, “I think it’s not only a question of mercy, but it also should be a question of justice to respect the gay people.”
On the issue of ordaining women, Francis had reaffirmed the church’s ban on women priests, saying, “That door is closed.”
But Schuller said the question is, “Who closed the door?” adding, “It is not possible to think the discussion should be finished.
“We should not only knock at the door but try to open it again,” Schuller said.
The Catholic church teaches that it cannot ordain women because Jesus willingly chose only men as his apostles. Advocates for women priests say he was only acting according to the customs of his times. Seventy percent of U.S. Catholics believe women should be allowed to be priests, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll earlier this year.
U.S. bishops, including Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley and Detroit Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron, have forbidden Schuller to speak on church property.
“Those who are not in harmony with Catholic church teachings in what they speak about should not be given a venue,” said Joe Kohn, spokesman for the Detroit archdiocese.
Schuller has been meeting privately with U.S. priests. Some priests and nuns were among the crowd of about 500 people who attended his public speech in Chicago last Wednesday.
Schuller said the “Call to Disobedience” arose out of a sense of “deep sorrow” among some Austrian priests, who feared that the worsening priest shortage would mean the end of parish communities. They feared a future of one priest serving as many as 20 parishes – offering Mass at one village before driving onto the next, unable to serve as a pastor to the people.
“We thought to speak out that this cannot be the future of the church,” Schuller said.
Last year, Austria’s church told the priests they could not support the manifesto, which had been criticized by former Pope Benedict XVI, and stay in administrative posts. The group, however, has won broad public backing in opinion polls for its pledge to break church rules by giving communion to Protestants and divorced Catholics who remarry.
Schuller said it is important for parish priests, many of whom are already quietly defying church doctrine by giving communion to divorced and remarried Catholics, to come out of the shadows.
“Don’t hide yourself in your parish communities,” Schuller said in his speech in Chicago. He said bishops know priests are defying doctrine at their parishes, but are comfortable about it because no one speaks out, so there seems to be no need for reform. “They got nervous when we spoke out.”
Schuller – who is from the Archdiocese of Vienna, the home of Sigmund Freud – said church leaders’ approach to dialogue is like “the man who goes to a psychoanalyst and says, ‘We can talk about everything, but not about my mother.’”
Dorothy Petraitis, 82, of Evanston, Illinois, who favors both married and women priests, told Schuller at his Chicago appearance that she is tired of waiting for the church to stop being a “dysfunctional family.”
“I want to be a member of a functioning church. That might mean I have to leave the church,” Petraitis said. “I don’t want to do that. Frankly, I’m a little pissed.”
“Please don’t leave the church,” said Schuller, who noted that he and his fellow rebel priests are often asked by conservatives why they don’t leave.
“We say the church is not a corporation for me. It’s not an apartment I have rented,” Schuller said. “We are church. It’s my church, and I want her to become changed.”
Complete Article HERE!
Atheists Who Do Good Are Redeemed, Not Just Catholics, says the pope
File Under: This is gonna make some waves!
Pope at Mass: Culture of encounter is the foundation of peace
(Vatican Radio) “Doing good” is a principle that unites all humanity, beyond the diversity of ideologies and religions, and creates the “culture of encounter” that is the foundation of peace: this is what Pope said at Mass this morning at the Domus Santae Martae, in the presence of employees of the Governorate of Vatican City. Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai, Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites, concelebrated at the Mass.
Wednesday’s Gospel speaks to us about the disciples who prevented a person from outside their group from doing good. “They complain,” the Pope said in his homily, because they say, “If he is not one of us, he cannot do good. If he is not of our party, he cannot do good.” And Jesus corrects them: “Do not hinder him, he says, let him do good.” The disciples, Pope Francis explains, “were a little intolerant,” closed off by the idea of possessing the truth, convinced that “those who do not have the truth, cannot do good.” “This was wrong . . . Jesus broadens the horizon.” Pope Francis said, “The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation”:
“The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. Instead, this ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God. That we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.”
“Instead,” the Pope continued, “the Lord has created us in His image and likeness, and has given us this commandment in the depths of our heart: do good and do not do evil”:
“The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”
“Doing good” the Pope explained, is not a matter of faith: “It is a duty, it is an identity card that our Father has given to all of us, because He has made us in His image and likeness. And He does good, always.”
This was the final prayer of Pope Francis:
“Today is [the feast of] Santa Rita, Patron Saint of impossible things – but this seems impossible: let us ask of her this grace, this grace that all, all, all people would do good and that we would encounter one another in this work, which is a work of creation, like the creation of the Father. A work of the family, because we are all children of God, all of us, all of us! And God loves us, all of us! May Santa Rita grant us this grace, which seems almost impossible. Amen.”
Complete Article HERE!
Pope’s strongman blasts old guard aside
The pontiff is to give more women top jobs and break the grip of Italian cardinals, his key aide tells John Follain in Vatican City
By John Follain
POPE FRANCIS plans to appoint lay women to top jobs in the Vatican and to dilute the power of Italian cardinals in a radical shake-up of the Catholic Church’s government following a series of scandals.
In a move branded as “revolutionary” by Vatican watchers, the Pope last weekend appointed eight cardinals to advise him on the governance and reform of the Curia, the church’s bureaucracy which has been tainted by controversies over child sex abuse by priests, leaks of papal files and allegations of corruption.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, whom Francis named to head the panel and who is now seen as a “power behind the papal throne”, predicted a difficult fight ahead for the Argentine pontiff.
Complete Article HERE!
Pope stresses “fundamental” importance of women in Church
Pope Francis emphasised the “fundamental” importance of women in the Roman Catholic Church on Wednesday, saying they were the first witnesses of Christ and have a special role in spreading the faith.
By Naomi O’Leary
The pontiff’s decision a week ago to include women in a traditional foot-washing ritual drew ire from traditionalists, who see the custom as a re-enactment of Jesus washing the feet of his apostles and said it should therefore be limited to men.
Francis, elected last month as the first non-European pope in 1,300 years, said women had always had a special mission in the Church as “first witnesses” of Christ’s resurrection, and because they pass belief onto their children and grandchildren.
“In the Church, and in the journey of faith, women have had and still have a special role in opening doors to the Lord,” Francis told thousands of pilgrims at his weekly audience in S. Peter’s Square.
He said that in the Bible, women were not recorded as witnesses to Christ’s resurrection because of the Jewish Law of the time that did not consider women or children to be reliable witnesses.
“In the Gospels, however, women have a primary, fundamental role … The evangelists simply narrate what happened: the women were the first witnesses. This tells us that God does not choose according to human criteria.”
See the pope’s full address here: (HERE).
It was the second time Francis had spoken of women’s role as witnesses to the resurrection of Christ, a subject of bedrock importance to the Catholic faith.
His Easter Vigil address on Saturday reached out to women and urged believers not to fear change.
REFORM
“This is very encouraging,” said Marinella Perroni, a theologian and leading member of the Association of Italian Women Theologians, which promotes female experts on religion and their visibility in the Church.
“Pope Francis is taking up, with a stronger emphasis, the teaching of previous popes about the role of women in the foundation of faith and the resurrection of Jesus,” Perroni told Reuters.
“The fact that the Pope acknowledges that the progressive removal of female figures from the tradition of the resurrection…is due to human judgments, distant from those of God…introduces a decidedly new element compared to the previous papacy.”
Supporters of liberal reform of the Church have called on the institution to give a greater voice to women and recognise their importance to the largest religious denomination in the world.
Some groups call for women to be ordained as priests, which the Vatican says is wrong as Jesus Christ willingly chose only men as his apostles. Advocates of a female priesthood reject this position, saying Jesus was merely conforming to the customs of his times.
The election of Francis, an Argentinean, last month came in the wake of another break with tradition when predecessor Pope Benedict became one of the few pontiffs in history to resign.
His 76-year old successor has set a new tone for the papacy, earning a reputation for simplicity by shunning some ornate items of traditional dress, using informal language in his addresses, and so far choosing to live in a simple residence rather than the regal papal apartments.
Sources inside the Vatican have said Francis could reform the Vatican’s bureaucracy and restructure or even close down the Vatican’s bank following a series of scandals at the heart of the Holy See that damaged the Church’s reputation.
Complete Article HERE!
Pope to review Vatican bureaucracy, scandal-ridden bank
Pope Francis, who has said he wants the Catholic Church to be a model of austerity and honesty, could restructure or even close the Vatican’s scandal-ridden bank as part of a broad review of its troubled bureaucracy, Vatican sources say.
By Philip Pullella
Francis, who inherited a Church mired in scandals over priests’ sexual abuse of children and the leak of confidential documents alleging corruption and infighting in the Vatican’s central administration, is mulling his options as he sets the tone for a reformed and humbler Holy See.
One of the tests of his papacy will be what he does about the bank which has regularly damaged the Vatican’s image over three decades and faces growing calls for reform.
Last year a European anti-money laundering body found that the bank – formally called the Institute for Works of Religion and known by the Italian acronym IOR – had failed to meet some of its standards on fighting financial crimes.
“Certainly if the pope wants to, he can close the IOR,” said a senior Vatican official, a prelate who had years of experience of directly dealing with the bank. The future of the IOR was one of main issues Francis would have to confront now that the whirlwind of his surprise election was slowing, he said.
Any significant reforms of the IOR would not come for some time and would probably be made after changes at the Secretariat of State, the central Church department which was at the center of a “Vatileaks” scandal that rocked the Holy See last year.
These changes would include the replacement of its head, Cardinal Tarciscio Bertone, who is number two in the Vatican hierarchy and has widely been blamed for failing to prevent the many mishaps and infighting in Church government during the eight-year pontificate of Pope Benedict.
“It will take time (to change the bank),” said another Vatican official who is not a prelate. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
The second official believed it was more likely that the bank, which manages money for the Vatican, international Catholic religious institutions and orders of priests and nuns, would undergo “serious restructuring” rather than being closed.
“But I would not exclude anything, including closing it down the line. Francis is doing surprising things every day,” he said.
Both officials said the new pope might, as a first step, set up a committee to advise him on possible changes to the Vatican’s financial structure.
The first sign of change would be a new secretary of state. “It’s not a question of if but when Bertone leaves,” the senior prelate said. “It remains to be seen who the pope chooses as new secretary of state.”
CRISIS IN THE CURIA
The basic failings of the Curia, as the Vatican’s central administration is known, were aired, sometimes passionately, at closed-door meetings of cardinals before they retired into the conclave that elected Francis on March 13.
“The Curia did not come out smelling like a rose from those meetings,” the senior prelate said, adding that many cardinals had demanded explanations of the scandals and information on how the bank is run and whether it should exist at all.
“The IOR is not an essential part of the ministry of the Holy Father as a successor of St. Peter,” Cardinal John Onaiyekan of Nigeria told an Italian television station before the election of Francis. “The IOR is not fundamental, it is not sacramental, it is not part of (Church) dogma.”
Anger at the Italian prelates who mostly run the Curia was one of the reasons that the cardinals chose the first non-European pope for 1,300 years at the conclave and quashed the chances of one of the frontrunners, Milan Archbishop Angelo Scola.
The next secretary of state, the senior source said, would have to instill a new style of “collaboration and service” among offices of the Curia, whose image was badly stained by the “Vatileaks” scandal.
Before he resigned, Benedict left a secret report for Francis on the scandal, in which sensitive documents alleging corruption and conflict over the bank’s administration were stolen from the pope’s desk and leaked by his butler.
The butler, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested and sentenced by a Vatican court to 18 months in prison last year but Benedict pardoned him and he was freed just before Christmas.
Bertone has been directly linked to the IOR’s recent troubles. He was the chief promoter of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, an Italian who headed the bank until last May when its board unceremoniously ousted him.
Gotti Tedeschi said at the time he was fired because he wanted the bank to be more transparent but board members said it was because he had neglected basic management responsibilities and alienated staff.
In 2010, when Gotti Tedeschi was still at the helm of the bank, Rome magistrates investigating money laundering froze 23 million euros ($33 million) the IOR held in an Italian bank.
The Vatican said the bank was merely transferring funds between its own accounts in Italy and Germany. The money was released in June 2011 but the investigation is continuing.
In February, the Vatican named a German lawyer, Ernst von Freyberg as new IOR president. But the appointment, made two weeks before Pope Benedict resigned, was clouded by Freyberg’s past business links to a military shipbuilder.
At the time of appointment, the Vatican said Freyberg would contribute to the IOR’s modernization and transparency in its attempts to meet international standards.
BAD IMAGE
“The Vatican Bank or IOR, is not unique. They are not the worst (bank), but certainly there are very serious problems that need to be addressed,” said E.J. Fagan, advocacy coordinator at Global Financial Integrity, an organization that seeks to curtail illicit money transfers.
“Pope Francis has very clearly stated that he wants to fight poverty. Money laundering of illicit financial flows is a major driver of global poverty and the Vatican should set a clear example,” he told Reuters.
The Vatican has been trying to shed its image as a suspect financial center since 1982 when Roberto Calvi, an Italian known as “God’s Banker” because of his links to the Holy See, was found hanged under London’s Blackfriars Bridge.
Moneyval, a monitoring committee of the 47-nation Council of Europe, said last July that the Vatican had failed to meet all its standards on fighting illicit cash flows, tax evasion and other financial crimes.
A report by Moneyval gave the Vatican an overall pass grade but failing grades on 7 of 16 “key and core” aspects of its financial dealings. It found major failings in the running of the bank, while acknowledging that the IOR was making changes to meet transparency requirements.
Five months before the Moneyval report, JP Morgan Chase closed the IOR’s account with the Milan branch of the U.S. banking giant because of concerns about insufficient transparency.
Italian media have reported that the bank, which currently answers to a commission of cardinals and enjoys great autonomy, could be placed under the control of another Vatican department, increasing the oversight called for in the Moneyval report.
Famiglia Cristiana, Italy’s leading Catholic weekly, called for the IOR funds to be administered by an independent “ethical bank” external to the Vatican.
“Total transparency would assure the faithful, who are continuing to offer generously, that the money they give to the Church, after the part used to guarantee the good running of the Church itself, would be destined primarily for the world’s poor,” the highly influential magazine said.
John Allen, author of several books on the Vatican and correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, said there was talk among cardinals at the pre-conclave meetings “that the Vatican does not need its own bank, and getting rid of it would eliminate a perennial source of speculation and conspiracy theories”.
Much of the estimated $7 billion managed by the bank, which was set up in 1942, belongs not to the Vatican but to religious orders and dioceses, who use it to transfer funds around the world.
Another option for the bank’s future would be to scale it down so it manages only funds needed to keep the Vatican running, drastically reducing the number of outside accounts and making it less vulnerable to possible abuse.
“We could just say to the Jesuits, the Dominicans, the Franciscans: ‘Sirs, you will have to take your business elsewhere’,” the senior prelate said.
However, part of bank’s profits have helped the Holy See balance its budget in the past, making up for deficits running into tens of millions of dollars.
This means that if the bank were to be phased out or closed, other sources of income would have to be found to fill the gap, the senior prelate said.
The Holy See would probably be careful, however, before relinquishing too much financial autonomy to outsiders so as to maintain its flexibility in emergency situations.
For example, before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the bank was able to move money to countries in the former Soviet bloc to keep Catholic Churches alive there in the face of communist repression.
Complete Article HERE!
Pope Francis – experienced manager set for reform
Francis of Assisi began his saintly career following what he said was God’s command: “Rebuild my Church.” The new pope who took his name heard the same message from the cardinals who elected him.
By Tom Heneghan
The 13th-century Francis toured the Italian countryside repairing dilapidated chapels before realising his mission was to change the whole Roman Catholic Church.
What the first Jesuit pope has is management experience in his native Argentina as head of the Jesuit province and chairman of the national bishops conference. As archbishop of Buenos Aires, he dealt with everything from poverty to national politics.
“He’s been at the top of the organisation, but he’s not been tamed by that,” says Rev James Hanvey, a Jesuit theologian. “In management speak, he’s held to the core values. He wants us all to refocus on the core values.”
Bergoglio’s record shows he has strong convictions and is not afraid to take unpopular decisions. Jose Maria Poirier, editor of the lay Catholic monthly Criterio in Buenos Aires, said Church staff there described him as an “attentive, human and considerate” boss who is also demanding, has little patience for bureaucracy, and appoints talented assistants.
His predecessor Benedict’s failure in this regard was partly to blame for the infighting that crippled the Curia bureaucracy and came to light in leaked Vatican documents last year.
SHAKEUP IN THE CURIA
The first hint Francis gave of plans to change the Curia came three days after his election when he reappointed its top bureaucrats temporarily rather than permanently, as Benedict did after being elected in 2005.
With his humble style, the pope has begun deflating the imperial side of the Vatican, which resembles a Renaissance monarchy with an absolute sovereign, a coterie of close advisers and Curia departments that answer to the pope but often don’t talk to each other.
Francis’s references to himself simply as the bishop of Rome – the position from which his papal authority flows – hints at a willingness to involve the hierarchy around the globe in running the world’s largest church.
Hanvey said a first step would be to call heads of national bishops conferences around the world to meet regularly in Rome as advisers. This was proposed by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), but Popes John Paul and Benedict used it so rarely that some bishops complained they were being “treated like altar boys” rather than senior colleagues.
The Curia needs regular cabinet meetings, more international staffers to overcome its domination by Italian clerics and a full work day rather than schedules that end in early afternoon, U.S. theologian George Weigel said.
It has only two women in senior posts, another aspect of the Curia critics say needs to be changed.
One overlooked fact is that the Curia, with just over 2,000 employees, is actually understaffed. “They’re overwhelmed,” said one senior figure from another religion in contact with the Curia, who asked not to be named.
WAITING FOR OTHER SIGNALS
The opaque operations at the Vatican bank, known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), were widely discussed among cardinals ahead of the conclave. Francis has criticised globalisation and unfettered capitalism in the past, so he may take a critical look at the bank, but he has not indicated his plans.
The book “His Holiness,” which published the leaked Vatican documents last year, detailed alleged corruption, inflated prices for work in the Vatican and clashes over the management at the bank.
The Council of Europe and the Bank of Italy have criticised it for lax anti-money-laundering controls and oversight, two areas where the Vatican says it is improving.
Critics also say the Church has not compensated victims of sexual abuse enough or held bishops sufficiently responsible for covering up cases. Francis would quickly tarnish his compassionate image if he did not go beyond the apologies and meetings with victims that Benedict pioneered.
Reputed to be a theological conservative, Francis has criticised Argentina’s government for legalising same-sex marriage, opposes abortion and women priests and defends the celibacy rule for male clergy. But he has also upbraided priests who refused to baptise babies of unmarried mothers. He has admitted to being “dazzled” by a young lady while in the seminary and said he helps priests who struggle with their vow of celibacy.
All this suggests a softer edge to some of his positions. “Benedict was clearly labelled” as a doctrinaire conservative, said Italian theologian Massimo Faggioli. “It will be easier for (Francis) to say things without the audience having a ready response.”
Complete Article HERE!