He has had only limited success — not surprisingly, since every pope since the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s has also tried and made little headway.

That's not to say Francis' predecessors failed completely.

The curia is less Italian and more international today than before Vatican II. Heads of major offices must now submit their resignations when they turn 75, rather than staying until they die.

Pope Benedict XVI streamlined the expulsion of abusive priests, while Francis has begun holding bishops accountable for protecting children in their diocese.

Francis ended the persecution of progressive theologians and writers that was common under Popes John Paul II and Benedict. He has also strengthened the synod of bishops as a consultative body.

Francis has especially focused on the culture of the Vatican.

He understands that structural change will accomplish little if the people inhabiting those structures do not change. He frequently condemns clericalism and calls for a more listening church.

As a result, cardinals have put away their bejeweled crosses and silk. Diocesan bishops report that curia officials are more willing to listen to them than in previous papacies.

But Francis has still not issued the long-promised constitution for the reformed curia, provisionally titled "Praedicate Evangelium" ("Preach the Gospel"), despite Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican top official, saying that it is basically finished. The last constitution for the curia was "Pastor Bonus" (Good Pastor), promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1988.

What should we look for in this new constitution?

Financial reform

Since every organization needs money to operate, the first thing to look at is how the new constitution deals with finances.

The Vatican has a long and embarrassing history of financial scandals, but financial reforms begun under Benedict and continuing under Francis mean that the Vatican Bank is now run well. But other parts of the Vatican still experience scandal and are in need of reform.

Financial regulators need to have the authority to hold everyone, including cardinals, accountable for their actions or inactions.

Contracts, investments and budgets should also be properly reviewed according to contemporary accounting standards.

Other questions include how suspected financial crimes will be investigated and whether there is adequate transparency. Will the financial control offices be adequately staffed with competent people?

Worker flexibility

Besides finances, the most important part of any organization is its employees. How the new constitution deals with HR, human resources, will be critical.

The church traditionally does a very bad job with HR, not only in the Vatican but all the way down to parishes. HR is not just about hiring and firing.

It also includes recruiting, vetting, hiring, training, supervising, paying, retraining, promoting and retiring or firing employees.

The Vatican does none of this well.

The Vatican also needs to keep up with changing technologies.

For decades, Vatican communications operated through a newspaper, a publishing house for Vatican documents and a shortwave radio network. These forms of communication are not relevant today.

Today it needs websites, video, podcasts, apps and social media.

Workers with new skills are needed for these and future technologies.

The typesetters, printers, radio technicians and others whose skills have become obsolete would be let go or retrained in most industries. But firing someone in Italy, let alone the Vatican, is very difficult.

It is not that the Vatican has difficulty hiring and retaining employees. Vatican employees may complain, but practically no one ever quits for a job outside the Vatican. The problem is getting the most out of the employees it has.

Management team

An equally intractable staffing problem is the management team that works directly with the pope.

This includes all the cardinals and bishops working in the Vatican as well as some laypersons heading offices. The Vatican Curia will never be truly reformed as long as the top positions must be filled by cardinals and bishops.

Most of the top officials in the Vatican get no training in management in seminary.

In dealing with employees, they often fall into paternalistic or authoritarian practices. Their eyes glaze over when looking at a budget or a spreadsheet.

They need ongoing training to handle these issues.

Popes also need more freedom to pick their teams.

Officials appointed under a previous pope are not always flexible enough to get on board with the new pope's priorities.

All new CEOs need a management team that is loyal to them and their goals.

They also don't always get the right mix the first time and therefore need to replace people who don't work out.

All of this is very difficult to do when the management team is made up of cardinals and bishops, who are still treated like princes and nobles, no matter what Francis says.

To remove a cardinal or bishop from a curia job, you have to find him another job in the Vatican or make him head of an archdiocese in his home country.

For years after his election, Francis kept in the curia cardinals and others who are not fully committed to his policies.

A big mistake was keeping Cardinal Marc Ouellet appointed by Pope Benedict as head of the Congregation for Bishops, the office responsible for appointing bishops around the world.

He needed someone in that job who would more aggressively seek out episcopal candidates who would actively implement Francis' vision for the church.

Having bishops working in the Vatican is theologically problematic since a bishop without a diocese is like a shepherd without sheep.

Vatican officials need to see themselves as staff to the pope as head of the college of bishops and not as part of the hierarchy.

Only a beginning

Finally, it is important that the constitution not be seen as definitive. Everyone needs to recognize that the curia, like the church, is "semper reformanda" — always in need of reform.

Too much time and too many hopes have been placed on perfecting this new constitution as if it was going to guide the church for decades.

Bureaucracies must constantly change to reflect new environments and goals as well as the needs of the person at the top, and the new constitution should be treated as simply a photograph of a moment in time, not a statue for the Vatican Museum.

No single reform will magically improve the curia. Additional reforms will be needed in the future, and they should be easy to do.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

And some observers wonder if this is the start of a trend that could continue in 2020, when at least two more such posts are expected to come free.

• French Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who has led the Congregation of Bishops since 2010, will conclude a second five-year term in the role on June 30.
• Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, who heads the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, passed the conclusion date of his first term this Nov. 23.

"Francis is really beginning to put together a team of his own inside the Curia," said Marco Politi, a respected Italian journalist who is author of nearly a dozen books on the Vatican.

"Many of Francis' supporters have criticized him behind the scenes for not having put in place a spoils system at the Vatican and for not putting people dedicated to his reform agenda in key posts," said Politi, a former long-time Vatican correspondent for the daily newspaper La Repubblica.

"Future appointments to the posts now occupied by Cardinals Sarah and Ouellet will permit Francis to create a more uniform leadership at the Vatican's highest levels," he said.

Although Francis' plans for Ouellet and Sarah are unknown, Ouellet turned 75, the traditional retirement age for bishops and cardinals, last June. Sarah will turn 75 in June 2020.

A third Vatican official who appears near retirement is Italian Cardinal Beniamino Stella, the prefect for the Congregation of the Clergy, who is 78 and passed the limit on his five-year term on Sept. 21, 2018.

The Vatican does not publicize Francis' choices on whether or not to renew his officials' terms of office.

In response to a question regarding whether Francis has renewed Stella or Sarah's mandates, the director of the Vatican Press Office, Matteo Bruni, noted that heads of Vatican offices frequently serve beyond the dates of expiration of their terms, at the pope's discretion.

Massimo Faggioli, a theologian and historian who has written extensively on Francis' papacy, said he did not know whether the pontiff might be wanting to free up space at the top of Vatican offices in order to call in allies.

"This is an open question for me," said Faggioli, a professor at Villanova University. Earlier in his papacy, said the theologian, Francis appeared to think that "he could do without the Curia."

"I don't know if he has changed his mind compared to the first years," said Faggioli. "It is very possible."

Neither Ouellet nor Sarah have openly criticized Francis. Both have, however, made clear that they disagree with the pontiff in certain areas.

Ouellet, for example, publicly opposed the proposal of October's Synod of Bishops for the Amazon to allow for the priestly ordination of married men on a limited basis in order to meet sacramental needs in the nine-nation region.

And the cardinal held a book launch at the Vatican days before the start of the synod for a volume enunciating his views, titled Friends of the Bridegroom: For a Renewed Vision of Priestly Celibacy.

For his part, Sarah famously waited a year to implement a 2014 request from Francis that he issue a decree making clear that women are allowed to participate in Holy Thursday foot-washing rites. Continue reading

In appointing seven women to the Vatican congregation that oversees religious orders July 9, Pope Francis achieved a double win.

In one stroke, he has advanced both the role of women in the church and the reform of the Vatican Curia.

This is significant because his efforts so far in these areas have been mediocre.

The Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CICLSAL), colloquially known as the Congregation for Religious, is responsible for setting policy for Catholic nuns, brothers and consecrated lay people.

Acting like a board of directors, members are appointed by the pope for terms of five years to review major policy recommendations before they are approved by the pope.

Six of the women were elected superiors by their religious orders, indicating the respect they have in their communities.

They are experienced and knowledgeable on the issues facing religious.

The seventh is the president of a group of consecrated lay people.

Of all the Vatican offices, CICLSAL is the one that most directly impacts religious women.

This is the office that instigated an infamous investigation of American nuns in 2008.

It is crucial that the congregation have diversity in its membership. For example, with women religious at the table, it will be impossible to ignore the issue of sexual abuse of sisters by priests.

In the past, the congregation was composed solely of cardinals, bishops and a few priests who were heads of religious orders.

It has had women on its staff and as advisers, but these seven women will have a vote when decisions are made.

However, they will be a minority of its membership with women only seven of the 23 new members appointed by Francis.

The appointment of women to the congregation is important because so far, progressive women have not been pleased with the pope's handling of women's issues.

While most women admire his pastoral style and concern for the poor and marginalized, many cringe when he talks about women.

He has referred to their role in the church as like strawberries on a cake.

He continues to use the language of complementarity that women found objectionable from John Paul II.

Francis opposes the ordination of women and supports the church's traditional teaching on birth control.

For progressive women, he is the grandfather they love, but when he talks about women, they roll their eyes.

Francis may not be able to understand the language of feminism, but he has made incremental changes that advance the role of women in the church.

In 2014 he appointed five women to the Vatican's International Theological Commission. Now he is adding women to a Vatican congregation.

The pace of change is still too slow, but it is moving in the right direction.

Francis is not intimidated by bright, strong women.

When as archbishop he opened an office dealing with human trafficking, the woman he put in charge said he was great: "He did whatever I told him."

Every pope since the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 has tried unsuccessfully to reform the Vatican Curia, the administrative bodies that help the pope govern the church.

Pope Paul VI (1963-78) made the biggest changes by creating new offices to deal with issues like ecumenism.

He also instituted age limits, forcing heads of major offices to submit their resignations at age 75 and requiring members of congregations and councils to retire at age 80.

He also increased the size of the College of Cardinals to 120 voting members and took away a cardinal's right to vote for a new pope when he turned 80.

Subsequent popes created additional offices and announced other reforms, but the basic organization of the Curia was left unchanged.

Francis, whose understanding of organizations and processes is not his strength, does understand the need to change the culture of the Curia.

He has repeatedly attacked clericalism and insisted that those working in the church should act like servants, not princes.

How successful these calls to conversion will be remains to be seen.

His reluctance to fire people limits his ability to control or replace his subordinates.

He has begun reorganizing and consolidating Curia offices in the hopes of improving coordination and downsizing.

But until he replaces the old guard with people sympathetic to his views, the actual impact of his reforms will be limited.

And while he has talked about allowing more local decisions, no list has been published of the issues that can now be dealt with by diocesan bishops and bishops' conferences rather than in Rome.

The next step will be to appoint lay men and women to other congregations in the Vatican, including the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Congregation for Bishops.

Also, it would be good to see women appointed as heads of the Congregation for Religious and other congregations. And how about lay men and women as nuncios?

Change in these areas is slow under Francis, but there is hope if it continues to go in the right direction.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a columnist for Religion News Service and author of Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church.

The Vatican issued the statutes on Wednesday for the new dicastery, which puts the pontifical councils for migrants, peace and justice, health workers and charity under one roof.

The reorganization is part of Francis' overall reform of the Vatican bureaucracy to make it more streamlined and responsive to the needs of dioceses.

Francis named Cardinal Peter Turkson to lead the department. The Ghanaian cardinal currently heads the Vatican's justice and peace office and has been the front man for Francis' landmark environment encyclical.

While Turkson is in charge of the overall office, the Vatican said Francis would personally oversee migrant issues.

Francis has made clear that the refugee crisis facing Europe, the Middle East and the Americas is the priority of his pontificate and has vowed to fight what he calls today's "globalization of indifference."

His first trip outside Rome as pope was to the island of Lampedusa, destination for migrants smuggled from Libya.

He prayed at the U.S.-Mexico border and said anyone who wants to build a wall there isn't Christian.

And most recently, he brought a dozen Syrian refugees home with him when he visited the hard-hit Greek island of Lesbos to show solidarity with new arrivals.

The new Vatican office, which takes effect on 1 January, puts the Vatican's social justice-minded offices together, evidence of Francis' keen aim to make better known the part of the church's activities as a "field hospital" for wounded souls.

The fact that he also placed "Cor Unum," the Vatican's main charity arm, alongside shows that he wants to be able to provide material assistance as well to all those in need.

Source

• The Washington Post
• Image: Time.com

It could turn out, however, to be a Pyrrhic victory - because by taking back control over a range of financial powers, the old guard has also reclaimed the blame the next time something goes wrong.

On Saturday, Pope Francis issued a motu proprio, meaning a legal edict, delineating the division of responsibility between the Vatican's Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) and the Secretariat of the Economy (SPE). The former is headed by Italian Cardinal Domenico Calcagno, the latter by Australian Cardinal George Pell.

In effect, the motu proprio restores several important functions to APSA that had been given to Pell's department in 2014. One local news agency bottom-lined the result this way in its headline: "The Italians win!"

To understand what's going on, we need to take a step back.

Although public fascination with Vatican finances usually focuses on the Institute for the Works of Religion, the so-called "Vatican bank," in truth most of the bank's $6.5 billion in assets is not Vatican money - it belongs to depositors, with almost half resting in the accounts of religious orders from around the world.

The real financial heavyweight in the Vatican has long been APSA, controlling both real estate as well as investments, and also running a wide range of other functions such as purchasing and payroll. The total value of the real estate holdings alone under APSA's control is officially estimated at around $1 billion, though many observers suspect that because of a lack of up-to-date market valuations, the actual figure may be several times higher. Continue reading

• John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux, specialising in coverage of the Vatican and the Catholic Church.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston, also told Crux in a wide-ranging interview on Saturday that he's skeptical about proposals to allow divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion.

That's especially significant since DiNardo, vice president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, was recently elected by US bishops as one of four US delegates to an October Synod of Bishops at the Vatican, where that issue is expected to be debated.

On the subject of Vatican reform, DiNardo was reacting to a presentation given to all the cardinals of the world on Thursday by the pope's council of nine cardinal advisors, which featured the idea of creating two new "super-departments," one for justice and peace and the other for the laity and the family, by combining a number of smaller offices.

"But how are they going to do that, to find a way to put together a number of Vatican congregations?" he asked. "If you do that, the structure has to be different. And that I did not hear," he said.

Other suggestions for reform, such as including lay people at the highest level of Church governance, will face resistance, he said.

"It's fine by me," he said of including laypeople generally. "The problem is, to bring anybody in as a head, there's a question the canonists raise, can [a layperson] be head if they have delegated power [from the pope]?"

He said it isn't possible to have laypeople lead major Vatican departments, such as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

"You're dealing with issues relative to theology and the very dimension of the faith. I think the pope wants somebody there who's at least a bishop," he said. Continue reading

Article and Image:

• Crux

In an interview shown on an Italian television station, Dubai-based Maradona urged his fellow Argentine move ahead with reforms.

"The Vatican, for me, is a lie because instead of giving to people it takes away," Maradona said.

"All popes have done this and I don't want him to do it," he added.

"I am disappointed with the Vatican, but I believe in you because you are making changes and pointing us towards more human things, things that I would like to see in the Church," he said of his compatriot.

Maradona was known for his great football skills, but also for the infamous "Hand of God" goal in a World Cup quarter final match against England in Mexico in 1986.

Maradona seemed to handle the ball into the net, but the goal was awarded as officials thought the ball had come off his head.

Continue reading

The accounts of Papa Francesco are varied. Sometimes he's portrayed as a Catholic Dalai Lama - all sweetness and serenity in the face of the world's horrors and all the complexity that cultures and institutions create for innocent individuals.

He visits jailed refugees; he says Mass in prisons; as Bishop of Rome (which he prefers as his title to pope) he says parish Masses and hears confessions; he has announced his respectful and non-judgmental attitude to gays; he embraces the disabled and hugs babies. His reactions are warm, humane and tug at your heartstrings.

At other times he's expected to be a senior executive of a global agency that specializes in refitting and refocusing extensive and well resourced enterprises that have lost direction. He has inherited a Vatican in tumult over alleged corruption, inefficiency, arrogance and the influence of a "gay lobby" that has adversely affected good governance.

Francis has declared his hand on the sort of people who should be in leadership positions in the Church - simple, humble, poor, engaged and respectful people who are pastors rather than authoritarian rulers, and leaders who understand their own and their flock's frailty, and who are listeners first.

But he has also brought in McKinsey's, a consultancy firm that is a world leader in advising companies, even nations, on managing organizational and cultural change. Pope Francis has engaged the services of the chief executive of McKinsey's in Germany to advise him on how best to refit the Vatican to deliver on its mission.

In what may be the first sign of the German's work, the pope has appointed a committee of seven lay experts with a cleric as their secretary to advise on all matters financial and operational in the Vatican.

Even if someone inside the Vatican came up with the idea, it is the first time that the Vatican itself has looked outside its own processes and resources for guidance about how to do its job.

The recurrent resort of dioceses and religious congregations is to invoke canon law as the guide on how to do things, to search out the way people in the institution have done it before, to appeal to the constitutions or the memory of the founder as a guide to the next step.

What this betrays is the limited experience, lack of training for management and leadership and myopic approach that too many "leaders" in the Church take. Not for them to investigate how comparable problems are handled by institutions away from the Church.

In my experience, too many in clerical and religious life say, "We've always done it this way and I don't want to be the one to set a precedent by looking outside the Church (or the congregation) for guidance".

Result: stagnation, inefficiency and failure. It's living proof of one definition of insanity in which, after failing the first time, one attempts the same task using the same approach but expects a different result.

Opening up to new approaches and to what Pope Francis says he's not afraid of - making mistakes - has a much greater likelihood of bringing lasting change than just repeating a failed formula.

But how is he going to do it? As the Dalai Lama or as the management consultants would?

I can already hear the cries of dismay that come from Church people when there is even the mention of the use of management consultants. And those shrieking with dismay will invoke the criticism Pope Francis has made of a world grown inhuman by idolizing efficiency, speed and "results" as the only criteria to be used for assessing the appropriateness or otherwise of suggested approaches to fixing things.

But Papa Bergoglio is a Jesuit and as I write this on the feast of St Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits (July 31), it is well to remember something central to his spiritual legacy and the school of spirituality dearest to the pope.

For Ignatius and because of what we celebrate at Christmas - the Incarnation - the challenge is to find God in all things. There is no circumstance, resource or reach of human experience that is outside or beyond what God's grace can encompass.

Finding God in all things means to value secular expertise in itself and for the good it can be used to achieve for religious purposes.

So this pope's answer as to whether he's the Dalai Lama or a McKinsey's executive is simple: his approach will encompass both.

But as an actor on the world stage, as the leader of a multinational faith community, and as one leading a highly exposed and frequently reviewed life, he will also have to take into account the advice of a very seasoned political operator.

It was the belief of Benjamin Disraeli, the legendary 19th century British prime minister, that the key to success in public life was not so much what you do first. It's what you are going to do about the consequences of the consequences of what you do first that needs to be considered.

Everyone can only wish Pope Francis well as he discerns the way forward for Vatican reform and the rejuvenation of the Church.

• Michael Kelly SJ in ucanews.com
• Published with permission

Michael Kelly SJ is the executive director of the UCAnews