Roman Curia: The Reform That Isn't There

Appointments made at a snail's pace. Documents that are useless or continually delayed. Offices drifting aimlessly. Why the renewal of the Vatican bureaucracy is not a priority for Benedict XVI

by Sandro Magister

Almost everyone saw in this decision by the pope, apart from a correction of course, the prelude to a reduction of the number of curia offices, with the elimination of some and the combination of others.

The parallel dismissal of cardinal Stephen Fumio Hamao and the consequent unification of the office he presided over, the pontifical council for migrants and itinerant people, with the council for justice and peace headed by cardinal Renato Martino, seemed to confirm this intent to prune things down.

But things didn’t go that way. At the beginning of May of this year, the Vatican nuncios of the world informed the episcopates of the various countries that the pontifical council for interreligious dialogue would become autonomous again, and would again have its own president. This president was appointed on June 25, in the person of cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the former foreign minister for John Paul II.

As for the pontifical council for migrants and itinerant peoples, this remains incorporated with “Iustitia et Pax,” but it continues to churn out symposiums and documents that immediately fall into disregard: the complete opposite of the expected simplification. Its latest product is a sort of catechism on the rules of the road presented to the press on June 19.

Joseph Ratzinger worked in the curia for 24 years before being elected pope. He knows it better than anyone else. He arrived there with the anti-Roman distrust typical of the Germans. But he later acknowledged that he had been won over. “One of the things that I learned well in Rome is how to bide time,” he said in a book-length interview in 1985. “Biding one’s time can be a positive thing; it can permit a situation to settle, to mature, and so to clarify itself.”

Perhaps this is exactly the way in which Benedict XVI intends to discipline the curia. For the two crucial appointments at the beginning of any pontificate – that of secretary of state and that of his deputy – he waited until the resistance and rivalries had dwindled down to nothing.

And since cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has been secretary of state, the pope has seemed quite pleased that general opinion no longer attributes the real or presumed task of reforming the curia to him, but to the enterprising cardinal.

Another cardinal to whom the pope would have given the mandate of redesigning the Vatican bureaucracy is Attilio Nicora, president of the APSA, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, as well as the superintendent of the governatorate of Vatican City and of the IOR, the Institute for the Works of Religion, the pontifical bank.

Nicora is a qualified expert in administrative procedures, while Bertone is known as a great organizer. But the fact is that until now, neither of them has ever been head of anything.

In the third year of his reign, it is by now evident that reform of the curia does not figure among the priorities on Benedict XVI’s agenda.

In part because of his advanced age, pope Ratzinger has drastically pared down the matters to which he dedicates himself body and soul: before all else, preaching, the liturgical celebrations, and the book “Jesus of Nazareth,” the second volume of which, on the passion and resurrection, he is already writing.

On these absolute priorities, Benedict XVI is not “biding his time”; on the contrary, he dedicates himself to them with a tireless passion equal to the crystalline clarity with which he formulates his theses. Pope Ratzinger never minces words on the controversial questions close to his heart. He clearly says what is the right thing to do: in the field of the liturgy as in the field of public ethics, for example on whether or not to receive communion if one maintains that abortion is permissible. But in the end, the pope wants to leave these decisions to conscience. More than issuing orders and establishing sanctions, he aims at educating, at convincing.

With a restive curia that is hardly his friend, Benedict XVI instead adopts another style: it is precisely that of “biding his time.”

The new deputy secretary of state, Fernando Filoni – the curia official in closest contact with the pope – was installed on June 9 of this year, after an extremely long gestation that was required to push back into the ranks the excessive number of aspirants for the position.

And it’s not only the appointments – documents, too, can undergo long delays intended to smooth over resistance.

The pope’s letter to Chinese Catholics that was promised for Easter was put off until the summer, in order to find a formulation that would satisfy both the “realist” diplomats, the ones most accommodating toward the Beijing authorities, and the “neoconservatives” like the cardinal of Hong Kong, Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, who are much more combative.

Another document that was announced repeatedly but delayed a number of times was the one that authorizes more extensive use of the Roman missal in Latin that was in effect until 1969. Here the opponents are both within and outside of the curia, and the pope listened to all of them.

One reason for this preventive caution was the deluge of criticism that continues to assail, forty years later, certain daring innovations made by Paul VI in the areas of the curia and conclaves.

Instead of going up against the machine, Benedict XVI limits himself to placing here and there in the curia his trusted men: from Albert Malcolm Ranjith Patabendige Don of Sri Lanka, made secretary of the congregation for divine worship, to his former right hand man at the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, Bertone. Or he calls in prominent personalities from the outside: like Brazilian cardinal Cláudio Hummes, and the former archbishop of Bombay, Ivan Dias.

But meanwhile, entire sections of the curia continue to drift, including the pivotal area of communications. The pontifical council that should concern itself with this has a new president as of June 27, Claudio Maria Celli, who has replaced the American bishop John P. Foley, now the pro-grand master of the equestrian order of the Holy Sepulcher. But the change doesn’t promise anything good: the pontifical council for social communications is a champion of non-productivity, and has been deprived of the position of secretary for years. “L’Osservatore Romano,” too, is a shadow of its former glory, and drags itself along while awaiting a new director who never arrives.

Much more than curia appointments, Benedict XVI has at heart the appointment of bishops.

He dedicates much greater attention to these than John Paul II did. Before giving his permission, the pope keeps the dossiers of the designates on his desk for up to two or three weeks. And sometimes he rejects them, without giving an explanation to the competent curia dicastery presided over by cardinal Giovanni Battista Re.

Pope Ratzinger is very demanding; he wants bishops of quality, and doesn’t always find them. The pace of episcopal appointments has fallen by a quarter with him, in comparison with the previous pontificate.

To explain to the Roman curia what it was not supposed to be, Paul VI described it in 1967, the year of his reform, as “a pretentious and sluggish bureaucracy, entirely wrapped in rule and ritual, a breeding ground for ambition and sordid antagonism.”

But Benedict XVI is not tender, either. On May 7, 2006, while ordaining 15 new priests for the diocese of Rome at Saint Peter’s, he recalled in the homily that, shortly before describing himself as the good shepherd, Jesus said of himself “I am the door.” And he continued:

“It is through Him that one must enter the service of shepherd. Jesus highlights very clearly this basic condition by saying: 'he who climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber" (Jn 10: 1). This word 'climbs' – 'anabainei' in Greek – conjures up the image of someone climbing over a fence to get somewhere out of bounds to him. 'To climb' – here too we can also see the image of careerism, the attempt to "get ahead", to gain a position through the Church: to make use of and not to serve. It is the image of a man who wants to make himself important, to become a person of note through the priesthood; the image of someone who has as his aim his own exaltation and not the humble service of Jesus Christ. But the only legitimate ascent towards the shepherd's ministry is the Cross. This is the true way to rise; this is the true door."

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“Much more than curia appointments, Benedict XVI has at heart the appointment of bishops.

He dedicates much greater attention to these than John Paul II did. Before giving his permission, the pope keeps the dossiers of the designates on his desk for up to two or three weeks. And sometimes he rejects them, without giving an explanation to the competent curia dicastery presided over by cardinal Giovanni Battista Re...

Pope Ratzinger is very demanding; he wants bishops of quality, and doesn’t always find them. The pace of episcopal appointments has fallen by a quarter with him, in comparison with the previous pontificate.

But Benedict XVI is not tender, either. On May 7, 2006, while ordaining 15 new priests for the diocese of Rome at Saint Peter’s, he recalled in the homily that, shortly before describing himself as the good shepherd, Jesus said of himself “I am the door.” And he continued:

‘It is through Him that one must enter the service of shepherd. Jesus highlights very clearly this basic condition by saying: ‘he who climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber” (Jn 10: 1). This word ‘climbs’ – ‘anabainei’ in Greek – conjures up the image of someone climbing over a fence to get somewhere out of bounds to him. ‘To climb’ – here too we can also see the image of careerism, the attempt to “get ahead”, to gain a position through the Church: to make use of and not to serve. It is the image of a man who wants to make himself important, to become a person of note through the priesthood; the image of someone who has as his aim his own exaltation and not the humble service of Jesus Christ. But the only legitimate ascent towards the shepherd’s ministry is the Cross. This is the true way to rise; this is the true door.’”

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