The ceremony was organised by the Global Catholic Climate Movement, the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network and the Order of Franciscan Friars Minor.

Among those present at the ceremony were Pope Francis and members of the curia.

Pope Francis remained seated in a chair outside the group throughout the ceremony.

During the ceremony participants held hands and bowed before carved images of pregnant women. One of the images reportedly represented Our Lady.

They sang and held hands while dancing in a circle around the images.

The dance resembled the "pago a la tierra," a traditional offering to Mother Earth common among indigenous peoples in some parts of South America.

No explanation was provided by the event organizers as to why the dance was performed for the Feast of St. Francis or what it symbolized.

During the ceremony, some people carried bowls of earth from different places around the world.

They placed these around a tree from Assisi, which had been planted as a "symbol of integral ecology.".

Each bowl symbolised a different issue, including ecological devastation and migration.

A group of people, including Amazonians in ritual dress, as well people in lay clothes and a Franciscan brother, knelt and bowed in a circle around images.

After what appeared to be the offering of prayers by participants, who prostrated themselves on the grass around a blanket upon which fruit, candles, and several carved items were set, an indigenous woman approached the pope.

She presented him with a black ring, which appeared identical to the one she was wearing.

The ring appeared to be a tucum ring - a black ring worn in Brazil and Latin America as a sign of dedication to certain social causes.

It is often associated with liberation theology advocate Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga.

After witnessing the ritual, Francis set aside his prepared remarks.

Instead, he prayed the Lord's Prayer without comment.

One of the statues presented to Francis was referred to as "Our Lady of the Amazon."

He blessed it.

The synod on the Amazon began on Sunday and will continue until 27 October.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Catholic News Agency

Commonly referred to as the "C9," the group was established by Pope Francis after his election as Bishop of Rome in 2013 to advise him in matters of Church governance and reform. Read more

Marie Collins' home phone in Dublin is hot; people are calling her from all over the world. The news of her resignation from Pope Francis' anti-abuse commission comes out of the blue on the day the Catholic Church celebrates the beginning of the penitential season of Lent.

Marie as a young girl was abused by a priest and has always been committed to helping the victims of pedophilia.

You have mentioned of an internal resistance. Do you believe the Curia is resisting the new rules against this terrible phenomenon of child abuse?

No, I do not think that there are resistances to the norms or specific action against pedophilia. It is rather the gut feeling that some considered our commission's work as an interference.

I do not know if this is part of the resistance against the Pope. What I found was a general unwillingness to cooperate.

You have however mentioned at least one specific case, arguing that it was the straw that broke the camel: the lack of commitment on the behalf of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to answer all the letters by abuse survivors.

I do not want to tell the names of the dicasteries. But yes, it is a specific case.

If you are an abuse survivor and write to tell your story asking for help and justice, and yet you do not receive a response, you are wounded once again. That is hard to understand.

Yet, both Benedict XVI and Francis have met with the victims, have listened to them, they have received them.

Francis had agreed to our recommendation. We asked that each individual victim should always receive a direct response. The Pope agreed, but some did not want to follow this indication. Continue reading

Sources

• La Stampa
• Image: Feminist Current

Collins is the only clerical sex abuse survivor serving as an active member on the Commission.

She said she is stepping down because the group's work is being "hindered and blocked by members of the Curia."

She cited lack of resources, inadequate structures around support staff, slowness of forward movement and cultural resistance.

She said the most significant problem is that some Vatican Curia members' reluctance to implement the recommendations of the Commission. This is despite their approval by the pope.

Although Collins has refused to give names or detail situations, other Commission members have spoken out recently.

They say it's under-budgeted for the scope of the task. Once says it's more suited to a diocese.

They also say it's experiencing difficulties due to its infrequent meetings and cultural barriers. These occur both in the Church and across nations.

Then there was the announcement in 2015 that new Vatican tribunal would be set up within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to handle cases of bishops accused of failing to act appropriately on abuse allegations.

In reality, the tribunal's creation has been scrapped following legal objections from the Congregation.

Source

• Crux
• Aleteia
• NCR
• Image: CathNewsUSA

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, said the cardinals' council reflected on what criteria is currently used to select prelates "in the light of their pastoral identity and mission".

The cardinals have also done an office by office review of the Vatican's bureaucracy.

This is in the hope of creating a new general constitution outlining a curial organisational structure.

Continue reading

The theologians, from throughout the world, issued a declaration at the end of a theological congress in Germany earlier this month.

The title of the gathering in Munich was "Opening the Council - Theology and Church under the Guiding Principle of the Second Vatican Council".

In a five-page declaration, 200 leading international theologians called for fundamental changes in the Church.

Reform of the Roman Curia must be expanded to a reform of the whole church and of church offices, they wrote.

Greater participation must be given to the laity and the synodal structures strengthened, the statement continued.

"Synodality must once again become a structural principle in the Church," the text underlined.

It must be fully implemented legally, must be enforceable and "practised at all Church levels".

Important Church decisions must not be made behind closed doors, the theologians agreed.

The theologians recalled Pope Francis's words that "Everyone must have a say in what concerns everyone".

Christoph Böttinger, a fundamental theologian from Eichstätt who presented the declaration, said it was addressed to all theologians, but also to the general public.

German Cardinal Karl Lehman told the congress that the Church's synodal structures must be strengthened at every level.

The cardinal, who was once an assistant to Karl Rahner, said this "synodality" was more important than possibly holding a Third Vatican Council.

There are great opportunities for the Church in a globalised world as long as it discards its centralist approach, he emphasised.

The council's decrees have not always been adequately applied or implemented, Cardinal Lehmann said.

German bishops' conference president Cardinal Reinhard Marx said Vatican II texts must be used as sources for further developing Church reform today.

In October, Pope Francis outlined his vision of a synodal Church at every level that listens, learns and shares mission.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Bavaria.by

In a press release on Saturday, the Vatican announced this and gave an update on the council's meeting last week.

In their next meeting in February, the so-called C9 council, which advises the Pope on Church governance, will reflect on an October speech by Francis that called for a "health decentralisation" of the Church.

On October 17, during the synod of bishops discussing the family, Pope Francis called for a more "synodal" Church that listens to people on every level.

Referring to Evangelii Gaudium, the Pope said then he could not substitute the ability of bishops around the world to discern the problems facing Catholics in their regions.

The Pope added that he was aware "of the need to proceed with a healthy ‘decentralisation'".

Saturday's Vatican statement said: "In its reflections, the [C9] council has noted the importance of the Holy Father's October 17 discourse, in occasion of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the institution of the Synod of Bishops,"

"The [C9] council has recalled the need to deepen the significance of that discourse and its importance also for the work of the reform of the Curia, so much so as to decide to dedicate a specific session to it during their upcoming meeting in February, 2016," the statement continued.

The C9 council's membership includes Cardinal George Pell from Australia.

At their meeting at the Vatican last week, the prelates continued to discuss a new "Laity, Family and Life" office.

They also spoke about a proposal to create another new Vatican office for "Justice, Peace and Migration."

The latter office would likely combine the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace with other offices to create one larger, centralised Vatican dicastery.

The C9 council also received an update from Cardinal Sean O'Malley on the work of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Vatican Radio
• Image: Vatican Radio

Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga said that anyone trying to do good "will have opposition".

"The books of the Bible said, especially the Book of Wisdom, ‘If you want to follow the Lord, prepare to the battle.' And the Pope is prepared," the cardinal said after a US conference.

"It's a revolution going on (in the Vatican). But a revolution of love, and hope," Cardinal Rodriguez said.

Cardinal Rodriguez also said that the latest reports of excessive spending and political machinations by officials of the Roman Curia only confirm the need to press ahead with an overhaul of the papal bureaucracy.

Two books detailing financial mismanagement and scandals at the Vatican are being published this week.

The Vatican has said the revelations in the books are based on information that Francis himself requested in the early months of his pontificate as he sought to tackle corruption.

Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, rejected the notion of "a permanent reign of confusion" in the Vatican.

He said that under Francis the reforms are ongoing. Francis "knows the situation, he knows what needs to be done, and how to proceed".

Cardinal Rodriguez — who said he had not yet read the two books — also said in an interview in New York that Francis will not be swayed or discouraged and will continue to clean house in Rome.

A Spanish priest and an Italian laywoman were arrested last weekend at the Vatican after an investigation into "misappropriation and disclosure of classified documents and information".

Both were former members of a commission that Pope Francis set up shortly after his election in 2013 to advise him on economic and bureaucratic reforms in the Curia.

The woman, Francesca Chaouqui, was subsequently released after co-operating with authorities.

She is reported to be a friend of one of the authors of the latest books, but she has protested her innocence.

The priest, Msgr Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, the secretary of the Vatican's Prefecture for Economic Affairs, belongs to a priestly society linked to Opus Dei, which expressed "surprise and pain" at his arrest.

Sources

• Religion News Service
• ABC
• The Tablet
• Image: Huffington Post

Pope Francis will reportedly appoint Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst to a new position with the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelisation.

There has been no official confirmation of the appointment, but it appears Bishop Tebartz-van Elst will be a "delegate for catechesis" for the pontifical council.

It seems the position has been created just for him.

He was reportedly told of his new role by the Vatican's secretariat of state in December, according to a Vatican Insider article.

Last year, the Pope accepted the bishop's resignation as Bishop of Limburg.

The bishop's departure came after a Church report revealed spending approaching US$40 million on Bishop Tebartz-van Elst's official residence and diocesan centre.

This saw the prelate dubbed the "Bishop of Bling" in the media.

At the time his resignation was accepted, a Vatican statement noted that the bishop "will be assigned a different position at an opportune time".

Veteran Vatican correspondent John Thavis wrote that Bishop Tebartz-van Elst's position at the new evangelisation council "will involve making contact with bishops' conferences on issues involving religious education, which has been one of his areas of interest".

Thavis also noted that "it struck some as odd that a bishop forced to resign for financial mismanagement would land any job in the Roman Curia".

"All the more, in this case, because under the Curia restructuring plan being hammered out by papal commissions, the council for new evangelisation may well disappear sometime next year."

However, parking problematic bishops in the Curia is a bit of a Vatican tradition, Thavis wrote.

Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo of Zambia was removed from his diocese over faith-healing practices in 1983, but was brought to the Council for Migrants and Travellers as a special delegate.

And, in 2011, Portuguese Bishop Carlo Azevedo ended up in a newly created position of delegate at the Pontifical Council for Culture, following disagreements with the patriarch of Lisbon, Thavis noted.

Sources

• Vatican Insider
• John Thavis
• Irish Times
• Reuters
• Image: The Guardian

The blistering indictment of the Vatican Curia came at the Pope's Christmas message.

The Pope's top administrators met Monday expecting the usual exchange of Christmas pleasantries.

Instead Francis' delivered a stinging critique of them and their approach to their ministries.

Careerism, scheming, greed, a lack of joy and a hart-hearted mindset had infected them with "Spiritual Alzheimers", the pontiff said.

The Holy Father listed no fewer than 15 "sicknesses and temptations" and told the gathering that some of the Curia acted as if they were "immortal, immune or even indispensable".

Vatican watchers say they have never heard such a powerful, violent speech from a pope.

"This is a speech without historic precedent," church historian Alberto Melloni, a contributor to Italian daily Corriere della Sera, told Nicole Winfield in a telephone interview.

"If the pope uses this tone, it's because he knows it's necessary."

Looking for a motive for the Pope's comments Vatican watchers suggest it is informed by the results of a secret investigation ordered by Emeritus Pope Benedict in the aftermath of the 2012 Vatileaks scandal.

The results of the report, written by three trusted cardinals, is known only to the two popes.

Among Francis' comments he asked

• How the "terrorism of gossip" can "kill the reputation of our colleagues and brothers in cold blood."
• How cliques can "enslave their members and become a cancer that threatens the harmony of the body" and eventually kill it off by "friendly fire."
• How some suffer from "spiritual Alzheimer's," forgetting what drew them to the priesthood in the first place.

The cardinals appeared to not be amused.

Few smiled as Francis spoke and at the end of the speech offered only 'tepid' applause.

Ending on an upbeat note, Francis wished them all a Happy Christmas! He also urged the Curia to be more joyful saying how much good a "dose of humour" could do.

After his speech Pope Francis greeted each one, but little Christmas cheer was in the room.

Sources

• Vatican News
• Reuters
• Associated Press
• Image: The Telegraph

His address to staff at the Vatican - the priests, monsignors, bishops and cardinals gathered for an end of year assessment by the pope of the year that has passed.

A few perfunctory words to round out a very busy year or a general expression for thanks for various contributions?

Not all!

A full on, Gospel based account of the traps of bureaucracy, the hypocrisy that can beset professional Catholic administrators and an implied warning that more is to come when the anticipated plans to restructure the Vatican Curia are announced in the next couple of months.

"Where did this one come from and why at Christmas?" is the understandable question on many minds, not least those whose tenure in their jobs depends on the one making the damning assessment.

But there's nothing new in what the pope said, observers of the Vatican and those who have worked closely with bishops and cardinals in Rome have told me.

"You could find any number of cardinals and bishops saying the same thing to my certain knowledge up to five decades ago," one previously highly placed and now retired lay Church official in Rome told me.

So how and why did the Argentinian Pope come to say it now to the clergy among the Vatican's staff, especially as he subsequently met with the Vatican's lay staff to thank them for all the sacrifices they make in their service of the Vatican every day?

What drove the first Pope in history to "dump" so completely, publicly and unceremoniously on his Curia and go to the heart of the Gospel to find a basis for his commentary?

Jesuits in Argentina I spoke to were not surprised at all by what the Pope had to say in Rome.

This way of behaving was vary familiar in Fr. Bergoglio's modus operandi with the Jesuits as Provincial and as Cardinal in Buenos Aires

I asked one Jesuit who knows the pope well how he interpreted this declaration in Rome.

He told me that such rhetorical flourishes from Bergoglio always come down to being directed against people, sometimes even just a single, though significant individual and what they represent of what he finds loathsome and intolerable.

My Jesuit informant told me the pope understands power and uses it to devastating effect when there is someone or a group he believes to be guilty of behaviour at complete odds with the Gospel.

To understand why the pope is such a no-nonsense individual on these matters, some appreciation of the context he comes from is needed. He began life, like many Argentinians of his age and generation, as a Peronist.

Peronism is a chaotic, at times self-contradictory, collection of populist, authoritarian and dysfunctional beliefs and political practices some of which have their foundation in the Catholic social teaching of the 1930s, particularly the corporatism of the Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno of 1931.

In Argentina, Peronism created all manner of socially progressive laws but also left a legacy of corruption, political confusion, violence and the missing of economic opportunities. Politically and economically, the country has "underachieved".

Economically, the ravages of international capitalism that exploited its resources and left little for the locals have not helped Argentina. And politically, the country has led a fractured life for over fifty years with the ghost of Juan Peron authorizing no end of varieties of mutually exclusive and contradictory political movements and parties.

In that political mess, violence has been the constant companion of public life, with the most outstanding moment being the "dirty war" from the mid 1970s to the early 1980s.

It was something in which the Catholic Church was deeply involved - a significant part though not all of its leadership turned a blind eye to the killings, murders and torture carried out by the military dictatorship that operated in the name of restoring the Church and Catholic values to the center of Argentinian life.

The ultimately unproductive Peronism of his youth, the political chaos of the country that led to a military dictatorship fighting a war with Argentinians, a Church where the Nuncio was the tennis partner of the military dictator and the President of the bishops' conference was chaplain general to the armed forces and completely supportive of its "saving" role: this is the turbulence of that provided the shaping influences on a priest with a deep faith but also a keen sense of the Church's public role.

That was the world that forged Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

He developed a deep antagonism to ideologically driven solutions to anything and his recurrent return to "the people", what they think/feel/believe.

His remaining piece of Peronism is its populism, guided by rational reflection.

Bergoglio prized himself away from tribal allegiances and predictable beliefs and alliances that had been the Peronist way of operating. Then the Gospel kicked in and the parameters of his life became the Gospel and the poor. As well, a deep dose of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius as reinterpreted from the 1960s on, provided him with a Christ focused, institutionally unadorned approach to faith that could not be dismayed by evidence that the church and its leadership were not all they were expected to be.

These simple resources are the foundation of his radicalism. If you put yourself in his shoes in the 1960s, '70s and '80s, it may well be that these simple elements are the basis for his survival in the tumultuous events of those many years.

What those elements now provide to the church and the world is a distinctive personality who displays many features of a genuinely post-modern personality.

He has no respect for statuses and structures unless the people holding them are delivering what they've been put in place to provide.

He never invokes tradition to justify his claims or assertions.

He seeks to engage and persuade rather than declare and direct.

He is a vividly autonomous actor operating from his own subjectivity rather a received set of institutionally generated maxims and boundaries.

Maybe that is why he captured the imagination of a postmodern world.

Michael Kelly SJ is executive director of ucanews.com

Many are welcoming this as a recognition that the laity have just as important a role in the church as bishops, clergy and religious, each of which has a congregation dedicated to their concerns.

Reform of the Curia has been a major item of the agenda of Pope Francis' Council of Cardinals.

Currently, there is a Council for the Laity, but in the Vatican pecking order, councils are ranked below congregations.

For example, a cardinal must head the nine Vatican congregations, but the 12 councils can make do with an archbishop.

Not only would the laity council be upgraded, it would be merged into a larger entity that could take over the functions of the Council for the Family, the Council for Health Care Workers, and the Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People.

Whether this new entity will be a congregation or a secretariat, like the new secretariat dealing with Vatican finances, remains to be seen.

In any case, a cardinal will head it, and Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga's name has been floated.

Laypeople could head offices within the congregation.

Another entity may result from the merger of the Council for Justice and Peace and the Council Cor Unum.

One plan would put the portfolios of the Council for Health Care Workers and the Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People into this new congregation rather than into the Congregation for the Laity.

If these councils go to the laity congregation, the emphasis would be on pastoral care for migrants and health care workers.

If they go to a new Congregation for Justice and Charity, then the emphasis would be on charity and justice. Continue reading

• Thomas Reese in Vassallomalta

Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese is the author of Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church.

The Vatican released little information about the meeting; Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi SJ, reminded journalists that meetings between Pope Francis and the department heads were six-monthly events.

Lombardi however confirmed the meeting took three hours and that Bishop Marcello Semerano, Secretary of the Council of Cardinals (C9) gave a presentation on the issue of Curial reform.

Lombardi told media the department heads "spoke and gave their observations" about the planned reforms and future C9 meetings will consider their comments.

When asked if there might be an announcement of some changes after the next C9 meeting, Lombardi was non-committal. "We will see at the next meeting", he told reporters.

The next scheduled C9 meeting is 9, 10, 11 December.

News of Monday's meeting has raised speculation in Catholic media about how wide-ranging Pope Francis' curial reforms might be, several commentators speculating the Holy Father might dissolve or merge certain congregations and raise the importance of others.

Rorate Caeli reports the discussion will see the four Pontifical Councils - Justice and Peace, Cor Unum, Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerants, and Pastoral Care of Health Workers - merged into one body with the name "Charity and Justice", and two other Councils - the Pontifical Council for the Family, and for the Laity merging into a single body.

The blog speculates the formation of a third body to coordinate all the organs of communication of the Holy See including, Radio Vaticana, L'Osservatore Romano, Pontifical Council for Social Communications and perhaps others.

Little comment surrounds the five remaining Pontifical Councils: Promotion of the Unity of Christians, Interpretation of Legislative Texts, New Evangelisation, Inter-religious Dialogue and Culture.

There is similarly little being said about the nine Congregations of the Curia: Doctrine of the Faith, Divine Worship, Causes of Saints, Bishops, Clergy, Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Catholic Education, Eastern Churches, and Evangelization of Peoples.

Pope Francis recently appointed Cardinal Robert Sarah as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

Sources

• News.va
• NCR
• Rorate Caeli
• Image: Vatican Radio

It's easy to be misled by the Pope's shoulder-shrugging interviews and impromptu phone calls.

On his return flight from Rio last year, he said, ‘If a gay person seeks God, who am I to judge?'

What did that mean?

Then there was that mysterious telephone conversation with an Argentinian woman apparently telling her it was OK to receive communion despite her irregular marriage.

The media has concluded that Francis wants the church to change its stance on divorcees and same-sex couples.

But the media are wrong.

Neither of these subjects is high on Francis's agenda — and, even if they were, he wouldn't alter Catholic teaching on sexuality.

The first non-European Pope was elected to do one thing: reform the Roman Curia, the pitifully disorganised, corrupt and lazy central machinery of the church.

He is determined to pull it off — but he's 77 and has part of a lung missing.

When he looks at his watch during long Masses in St Peter's, it's not just because elaborate services bore him.

He knows he may not have much time.

‘Two or three years and then off to the house of the Father,' he said this week.

Was he serious? You can never tell.

Jorge Bergoglio has little in common with Joseph Ratzinger apart from an intense, orthodox Catholic faith and a love of classical music.

Like many Jesuits, Francis isn't interested in liturgy.

This is actually good news for traditionalists, because it means he won't clamp down on the Latin Mass (with one baffling exception: the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, a new order whose use of the Old Missal has been brutally restricted).

But there is one big difference.

To quote a senior bishop: ‘Benedict allowed the Roman Curia, and specifically the Italians in it, to kill his pontificate.

Francis will not permit that to happen.' He will strike first. Continue reading

Source

• Damian Thompson in The Spectator

Damian Thompson is an associate editor of The Spectator.

The scene was the Sala Stampa of the Holy See some 10 days ago.

Australian Cardinal George Pell was presenting the New Economic Framework for the Holy See, a document which outlines proposed major reforms not only to IOR (the Vatican bank) and to APSA (the Vatican City treasury), but also to all the various Vatican-run media.

Halfway through the press conference, a reporter from Milan newspaper Corriere Della Sera asked a question.

She wanted to know why, among the six new lay members of the board of IOR, there was no Italian representative.

For a brief moment, almost the entire press room started to laugh.

So, what do you want to do? Put the foxes in charge of the chickens again?

Has not the recent traumatic history of IOR been besmirched by the nonchalant ease with which, thanks to a bit of blind eye and to a bit of maladministration, Italian high finance (Banco Ambrosiano, Enimont) and sometimes even organised crime used IOR for their own money-laundering purposes.

Cardinal Pell, of course, was much too polite to acknowledge any such thoughts but, rather, he assured us that there will soon be Italian bankers on the IOR board.

The point, though, is there for all to see.

One aspect of Pope Francis's reform drive, but by no means the only aspect, involves changes in the all-too Italian ways of much of the Roman curia, which at times can still seem modelled on the court of a 16th-century Tuscan city republic.

Recently, Italian media reported the Pope's alleged annoyance at the fact that the former secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, was having major reconstruction work done on a 700 sq m flat inside the Vatican.

Francis, of course, continues to live in 70 sq m in the relatively modest surrounds of the Vatican's Santa Marta residence, rather than in the Apostolic Palace.

When questioned about his apartment, Cardinal Bertone pointed out that (a) the Pope was not annoyed about it, (b) it was 300 sq m, not 700, and (c) that all the reconstruction work was being done at his own expense.

Curiously, in the middle of these polemics, the papal Twitter issued a tweet which read: "A sober lifestyle is good for us and enables us to share more fully with those in need." Continue reading

Source

• The Irish Times
• Image: The Catholic World Report

Among the items under consideration were financial matters and the reform of the Vatican bureaucracy, and, according to La Stampa, Vatican Spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi told journalists, the Pope's advisors, yesterday, presented their initial conclusions on the reform of the APSA (Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See), the IOR and the Holy See's economic and administrative structures in general.

As part of the three day meeting, a Commission looking into the Vatican bank briefed Pope Francis and the Council of Cardinals for three hours according Independent.ie.

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi confirmed the commission had given the pope and the cardinals an "ample and detailed" report on the current and past situation of the bank, and had offered "several possible indications" on its future.

Calling the report "thorough", Fr Lombardi said the cardinals show "significant interest in" the report and cardinals reportedly asked "further questions".

On Wednesday, Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, a chair of Francis' Council of eight cardinals, told the French Catholic newspaper La Croix that creating a single "finance secretariat" was needed to better organise the diverse financial departments.

He said a cardinal would probably head it, assisted by a permanent advisory body of lay experts.

According to CNS, it is rumoured the pope and council of cardinals is working on a draft of an apostolic constitution that would reorganise the church's central administration, however Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi gave nothing away other than adding the Vatican Secretary of State was present for two days of the three day meeting.

Fr Lombardi announced the pope would meet with the council again in April 28-30 and July 1-4, maintaining a pattern of gathering roughly every two months.

Sources

• La Stampa
• CNS
• La Stampa
• Independent.ie
• Associated Press
• La-Croix
• Image: La Stampa

Wellington's Catholic newspaper, Wel-Com reports that Cardinal Rodriguez said the C8 plans to help the pope to reform the Roman Curia, making it more simple and effective and 'closer to the people'.

These plans include consideration of a new dicastery or department to represent lay people in the Church. 'There is a dicastery for the bishops, for the priests, for religious but only a council for lay people who make up the greater part of the Church.'

Cardinal Rodriguez said The Catholic Church in New Zealand is likely to have more representatives at the highest echelons of church governance.

Source

• Wel-Com
• Image: Derek Johnson/Wel-Com

The reason for the surgery was not made known at the time, but a Vatican source later said the 58-year-old archbishop — seen as the key person to implement the reform of the Roman Curia — had appendicitis.

Though the ceremony was supposed to be a genuine changing of the guard, the focus remained on the retiring secretary, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

The cardinal, who for seven years held the post of head of Vatican diplomacy and effectively "prime minister" of the Holy See, was blamed for many of the gaffes and problems of the papacy of Benedict XVI, including the Vatileaks scandal.

In a short address reviewing his years of service, Cardinal Bertone said he hoped Archbishop Parolin would be able "to untangle the knots that still prevent the Church from being in Christ the heart of the world, the longed-for and incessantly invoked horizon".

He acknowledged the scandals that had beset Pope Benedict XVI, saying the now-retired Pope had "suffered greatly on account of the ills that plagued the Church and for this reason he gave her new legislation in order to strike out decisively the shameful phenomenon of paedophilia among the clergy, without forgetting the initiation of new rules in economic and administrative matters".

Thanking the cardinal, Pope Francis praised "the courage and patience with which you have faced adversities — and there have been many".

Unlike Cardinal Bertone, Archbishop Parolin is an experienced Vatican diplomat. Pope Francis chose him to head the Secretariat of State only days after he was elected — even though he had met the archbishop only once.

"The truth is that I haven't spoken much with him and I think that when I have the chance, I'll ask him why he named me," Archbishop Parolin told Venezuela's El Universal newspaper.

Sources:

The Tablet

Associated Press

Vatican Insider

Catholic News Agency

Image: The Dialog

On the subject of Church leaders, he said: "You know what I think about this? Heads of the Church have often been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers. The court is the leprosy of the papacy."

The interview with Eugenio Scalfari, the atheist editor of La Repubblica, followed a long letter the Pope sent the paper in September, in response to an editorial.

Then the Pope followed up with a phone call, suggesting a meeting.

Scalfari said the two joked about whether one wanted to convert the other, and the Pope said: "Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us."

When Scalfari observed that some priests make him anti-clerical, the Pope replied sympathetically: "It also happens to me that when I meet a clericalist, I suddenly become anti-clerical. Clericalism should not have anything to do with Christianity."

Questioned about the problems facing the Church today, Pope Francis answered: "The most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old. The old need care and companionship; the young need work and hope but have neither one nor the other, and the problem is they don't even look for them any more. They have been crushed by the present.

"You tell me: can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing."

Francis also revealed he had an unusual spiritual experience just after the conclave elected him.

As he fought off anxiety and doubt, the Pope recalls, "I closed my eyes and I no longer had any anxiety or emotion. At a certain point I was filled with a great light. It lasted a moment, but to me it seemed very long."

Sources:

La Repubblica

Reuters

Image: Catholic Online

Six months into his papacy, it is crystal clear that this Argentine cardinal, now Pope Francis, was very serious about what he said.

In his words and his deeds, in what he has done and what he is laying out to do, there is no doubt that the Catholic Church under Pope Francis is facing a game change.

One: Declericalizing the curia

The first and foremost task, of course, is to sweep clean the Roman Curia, which was a mess by the time of Benedict XVI's resignation. However, imposing change in a decrepit yet conceited governance system is no easy task.

"Things have gone downhill recently, but the Vatican is too big to function without procedures," one veteran Vatican official said.

The financial shenanigans and corruption have already been made public, but beneath that there have been the equally corrosive effects of careerism and palace intrigue, which have entrenched the governing apparatus of the papal state for centuries.

Yet Pope Francis is tactfully circumventing the old guard by forming his own secretariat, composed of a handful of Argentines and Italians, who work on the second floor of the Santa Marta hostel, the residence of choice ever since his elevation to the papacy in March.

As governed by this papal "mini-curia," Francis has not only established the eight-cardinal papal council to study the ways and means of curia reform, but he has also set up a group of mainly lay experts to streamline financial and administration procedures. The significance of the latter decision has already been borne out in the murmurings heard among many observers: is this an omen of declericalizing the headquarters of the Catholic Church?

Two: Reshaping the hierarchy

Fifty years after Vatican II, the Church hierarchy is still full of clericalism, thanks to the disproportionate presence of liturgical traditionalists who populated the upper echelons of the Church during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Aspirant clergy, who possess the pseudo-vanity mentality of diocesan chancery officials, often post themselves above, rather than among, the people who they purport to represent.

However, Francis made it clear that his ideal bishops are "close to the people…. and also by outward simplicity and austerity of life." Further, servants of God "should not have the psychology of princes."

What is absent from Francis' list of episcopal attributes were "loyalty and orthodoxy," the two criteria much emphasized by John Paul and Benedict.

It appears that Francis is doing his due diligence in order to pre-empt the tenacious clericalism, and all its bells and whistles, by severing the mythical umbilical cord tied to the divine lineage, which is habitually invoked for the self-serving purposes of many clerics.

In particular, the phrase "should not have the psychology of princes" may be aimed at the cardinals who form the Church's most elite members, some believe. One of them will one day become the "crown prince" and inherit the throne of the Bishop of Rome but that is no excuse for elitism. Continue reading

Sources

• Dr John C Keng in UCA News
• Image: The Los Angeles Times

Dr. John C Keng is a Canada-based freelance writer on Church and social issues.