Radical change has become in the new norm in Rome under the first six months of the pontificate of Pope Francis. The first pope ever from the Americas has brought with him \u2013 \u201cfrom the ends of the earth\u201d, as he put it \u2013 a fundamentally new perspective. Now conservatives in the Vatican are braced for what could be, next week, a bigger change than anything so far.<\/p>\n
A new council of\u00a0eight cardinal advisers \u2013 mavericks to a man \u2013 will meet 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.\u00a0 The new body has been described by the leading ecclesiastical historian, Professor Alberto Melloni, of the University of Modena as the \u201cmost important step in the history of the church for the past 10 centuries\u201d.\u00a0 Even allowing for a little Italian exaggeration, this is clearly a big deal.<\/p>\n
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 too 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 address only to \u201cPope Francis, The Vatican, Rome\u201d.<\/p>\n
He has also been radical in his pronouncements on church teaching. On the plane back to Rome from World Youth Day in Brazil \u2013 where his final Mass had attracted three million worshippers \u2013 Francis spoke freely in answer to reporters questions on a wide range of topics. His reversal of Rome\u2019s attitudes to gay people \u2013 \u201cwho am I to judge?\u201d grabbed the headlines. But in 80 minutes of Q&As the new Pope signalled change in many areas.<\/p>\n
That was a message reinforced this 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 \u201cobsessed\u201d with abortion, gay marriage and contraception and become a church of “small-minded rules”. \u00a0Where his predecessor Benedict XVI\u2019s wanted a smaller purer church, Francis wanted an inclusive one which was a \u201chome for all\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to find a new balance,\u201d Pope Francis concluded, \u201cotherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. \u201d<\/p>\n
Conservative Catholics have struggled with all this, stuttering that the new Pope was changing no doctrine but merely offering a different style.\u00a0 Many of his comments could have been made by Pope Benedict, they said, it was only Francis\u2019s tone which was different.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But it is now becoming clear that the new Pope is bent on real change. \u00a0To some extent style and substance have been interwoven. When Francis visited the southern Italian island of Lampedusa in July \u2013 to show solidarity with the African refugees whose flimsy boats find it the easiest part of Europe for them to reach \u2013 he ruffled feathers in the Vatican. First, he did not consult the Vatican equivalent of the prime minister\u2019s office, the Secretariat of State. And he tried to book his own flight on Alitalia flight, till the airline\u2019s protocol people rumbled him.<\/p>\n
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 \u20ac25,000 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 hand-written document he gave them powers to summon any documents and data they deemed necessary and told them to report directly to him.<\/p>\n
He has made moved to rehabilitate Liberation Theology \u2013 the Latin American movement which said the Church should work for the political and economic as well as the spiritual liberation of the poor.\u00a0 The theology was condemned as Marxist by the Vatican under previous Popes and its advocates were silenced.\u00a0 But Pope Francis last month met the father of Liberation Theology, Gustavo Guti\u00e9rrez, 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 canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the champion of the poor in El Salvador who was martyred under a right-wing military government.<\/p>\n
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).<\/p>\n
The big question now is: will the new Pope be able to institutionalise that, and all 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.<\/p>\n
The trend in his appointments has been steadily away from the conservatism of the previous three decades. He has replaced Benedict XVI\u2019s Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who chief qualification for the job appeared to be that he was a friend and theological soulmate of the previous pope. Bertone departed with bitterness his month lashing out against the \u201ccrows and vipers\u201d who had undermined him.<\/p>\n
In his stead Francis has placed Archbishop Pietro Parolin, a talented and respected Vatican diplomat, who will rebuild the Holy See\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 \u201cprovisionally\u201d when Francis took over, are being steadily removed. New men are in place in the key Vatican departments in charge of bishops, clergy and several others.<\/p>\n
The extent of the change they are expected to usher in was evident from Francis\u2019s big interview this month. Asked allusive religious questions the Pope plunged in with direct answers. Quizzed about \u201cIgnatian spirituality\u201d Francis responded with comments on reform. \u00a0\u201cMany think that changes can take place in a short time,\u201d he said, warning that it would take time to \u201clay the foundations for real, effective change.\u201d<\/p>\n
He spoke openly about his failings as a younger man when \u2013 confirming for the first time the revelations made in my book Pope Francis – Untying the Knots<\/i> \u2013 that as leader of Argentina\u2019s Jesuits, aged just 36, his \u201cauthoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
God is to be encountered in the world of today, he said. The Christian who \u201cwants everything clear and safe\u2026 will find nothing\u201d. Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God.\u00a0 The church was wrong in the past in accepting slavery and the death penalty. \u201cEcclesiastical rules and precepts that were once effective\u2026 have now lost value or meaning\u201d. The church must \u201cgrow in its understanding\u201d and \u201cmature in its judgment\u201d.<\/p>\n
For a Pope this is explosive stuff.\u00a0 The task facing him now is to translate that vision into practice. That is the business which will begin on Tuesday at his first meeting with his Group of Eight cardinal advisors.<\/p>\n
They will arrive in Rome well prepared. 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.<\/p>\n
The challenge for Pope Francis next week will be to begin the task of synthesising and co-ordinating 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.<\/p>\n
On Thursday he will celebrate the feast of St Francis of Assisi \u2013 whose name this first Jesuit Pope took.\u00a0 In his mind will echo the words that his namesake reputedly heard issuing from a crucifix in the 12th<\/sup> century: \u201cFrancis, repair my Church for it is in ruins\u201d. The new Pope knows he is charged with no less a task.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n The Independent<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n \u2018Pope Francis – Untying the Knots\u2019 by Paul Vallely was published last month by Bloomsbury<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Radical change has become in the new norm in Rome under the first six months of the pontificate of Pope Francis. The first pope ever from the Americas has brought with him \u2013 \u201cfrom the ends of the earth\u201d, as he put it \u2013 a fundamentally new perspective. Now conservatives in the Vatican are braced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,41],"tags":[681,645,682,244],"class_list":["post-8168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-church","category-religion","tag-church-reform","tag-pope-francis","tag-roman-curia","tag-vatican"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8169,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8168\/revisions\/8169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}