As a group of eight Catholic cardinals handpicked by the Pope to shake up the Vatican’s murky and autocratic bureaucracy prepares to meet, the group’s leader has said they plan to rip up and rewrite the apostolic constitution which apportions power at the Holy See.
Pope Francis appointed eight
Catholic cardinals to shake up the Vatican’s murky and autocratic
bureaucracy Photo:
AFP
The cardinals, who were appointed in April by Pope Francis and will confer
with him for the first time at the Vatican on Oct. 1-3, were briefed to revise
the constitution, known as Pastor Bonus, drawn up in 1988 by Pope John Paul, in
a bid to give a great voice to bishops around the world.
But Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, the group’s leader, said as the
meeting loomed they were planning to go much further that just changing “this
and that.”
"No, that constitution is over," he said in a TV interview. "Now it is
something different. We need to write something different,” he added.
“In the past the Vatican has just revised existing rules so this is a rupture
after a century of increasing centralisation,” said Gerard O’Connell, a Vatican
analyst at the Vatican Insider.
"Cardinal Maradiaga is hinting that the Pope is asking the fundamental
question: What can be decided in Rome and what at local level? How can the Roman
Curia serve bishops instead of being an office of censure and control?”
O’Connell cited Japanese bishops as victims of the Vatican’s centralisation.
“They must ask advice from Rome on the correct Japanese to use in their liturgies, yet you would think they would be the best judge.”
On Saturday, Francis gave another clear indication that he sees the Vatican as a hotbed of intrigue and power struggles when he instructed Vatican policemen on Saturday to crack down on gossip within the Vatican’s walls as well as looking out for intruders.
Defining gossip as the devil’s work, “a forbidden language” and “a war waged with the tongue”, he told gendarmes gathered for mass to tell gossipers they caught in the act, “Here there can be none of that: walk out of St. Anne’s Gate. Go outside and talk there! Here you cannot!”
Cardinals gathering in Rome before Francis was elected in March complained Vatican officials had become a self serving elite indifferent to the needs of dioceses around the world.
Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga said his group had received suggestions on Vatican reform from around the world, including 80 pages of suggestions from Latin America. The convergence on a few main themes suggested God’s will was at work, he said.
“You cannot have millions of Catholics in the world suggesting the same unless the Holy Spirit is inspiring."
Francis is also set to relax the control the Vatican exerts over the Italian conference of bishops, Italian media reported on Sunday. Unlike in other countries, the head of the Italian conference is not elected by bishops but picked by the pope, a system Francis is reportedly planning to scrap.
“The head of the conference wields political influence in Italy, so this move by the pope means the Vatican’s power over Italian politics will decline,” said Maria Antonietta Calabro, a Vatican expert at Italian daily Corriere della Sera. “The Pope has already told Italian bishops he wants them to deal with Italian politics, not the Vatican,” she added.
Francis last month said he would replace the Vatican’s long time secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone – who reportedly had frequent contact with Italian politicians – with Archbishop Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s nuncio in Venezuela.
“They must ask advice from Rome on the correct Japanese to use in their liturgies, yet you would think they would be the best judge.”
On Saturday, Francis gave another clear indication that he sees the Vatican as a hotbed of intrigue and power struggles when he instructed Vatican policemen on Saturday to crack down on gossip within the Vatican’s walls as well as looking out for intruders.
Defining gossip as the devil’s work, “a forbidden language” and “a war waged with the tongue”, he told gendarmes gathered for mass to tell gossipers they caught in the act, “Here there can be none of that: walk out of St. Anne’s Gate. Go outside and talk there! Here you cannot!”
Cardinals gathering in Rome before Francis was elected in March complained Vatican officials had become a self serving elite indifferent to the needs of dioceses around the world.
Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga said his group had received suggestions on Vatican reform from around the world, including 80 pages of suggestions from Latin America. The convergence on a few main themes suggested God’s will was at work, he said.
“You cannot have millions of Catholics in the world suggesting the same unless the Holy Spirit is inspiring."
Francis is also set to relax the control the Vatican exerts over the Italian conference of bishops, Italian media reported on Sunday. Unlike in other countries, the head of the Italian conference is not elected by bishops but picked by the pope, a system Francis is reportedly planning to scrap.
“The head of the conference wields political influence in Italy, so this move by the pope means the Vatican’s power over Italian politics will decline,” said Maria Antonietta Calabro, a Vatican expert at Italian daily Corriere della Sera. “The Pope has already told Italian bishops he wants them to deal with Italian politics, not the Vatican,” she added.
Francis last month said he would replace the Vatican’s long time secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone – who reportedly had frequent contact with Italian politicians – with Archbishop Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s nuncio in Venezuela.
....
Taken from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/10342768/Pope-Francis-to-rip-up-and-rewrite-Vatican-constitution.html
Pope Francis to meet cardinals for historic talks on church reforms
Eight cardinals will help pontiff revise Catholic church's constitution and put forward ideas for reforming the curia
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The three-day summit with the cardinals has been billed as a potentially critical moment for Pope Francis’s six-month-old papacy. Photograph: Franco Origlia/Getty Images
The eight cardinals picked by Pope Francis to advise him on reform of the Roman curia and the governance of the Catholic church are preparing to meet the pontiff for the first time on Tuesday, in an unprecedented three-day meeting likened to a "papal G8".
In a move already billed as a potentially critical moment for Francis's six-month-old papacy, the multinational group of "outsider" cardinals is flying in to Rome from all corners of the globe to present him with ideas for how to reform the Vatican and the church worldwide.
The panel – officially named the Council of Cardinals – was hailed as a revolutionary move when it was formed in April shortly after Francis's election. One observer said that, in its apparent embrace of a more collegial style of church governance, it was the "most important step in the history of the church for the past 10 centuries".
However, the pope's spokesman, Federico Lombardi, on Monday stressed that the arrangement had its limits. Although the cardinals would be called on to advise the pope and would give the church another "means of consultation", there was no question about who would be having the final say.
"A council advises, and he who decides is the pope," he said.
The eight cardinals appointed in April by Francis come from all over the world, including the United States, Australia, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo. None has worked in the Vatican's bloated and dysfunctional bureaucracy. All, said Lombardi, were equipped "with great experience of the church's problems in the world".
A personal decree known as a "chirografo" issued by Francis said their official task was to advise him on "governance of the universal church" and help him revise the Pastor Bonus, the apostolic constitution on the curia drawn up by Pope John Paul II in 1988.
Indications are that that revision could be dramatic and could possibly lead to a new constitution.
The charismatic co-ordinator of the council, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, the archbishop of Tegucigalpa in Honduras and president of the Caritas Internationalis charity, told Italian television last weekend: "No, that constitution is over. Now it is something different. We need to write something different."
Lombardi, however, said "no startling decisions" were expected from this first meeting, which will go on until Thursday afternoon. In his recent interview with the Italian Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica, Francis said reform would take time and required a period of "discernment".
He also said he was looking to create not "token consultations, but real consultations" with the eight cardinals, several of whom have been outspoken in their criticism of subjects including curial disfunction and the clerical sex abuse scandal.
"I want to see that this is a real, not ceremonial consultation," he added, saying the council had been born out of the general congregations in the lead-up to the conclave – meetings in which cardinals from outside the curia voiced extreme concern over its activities. They ended up voting for Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, an Argentinian who said later he had come "from the end of the world".
Throughout the three-day summit, the cardinals will meet with the pope and a secretary in a private library in the apostolic palace. The pope's role will be primarily to listen to what the men have to say, said Lombardi. The main language will be Italian but the cardinals will be able to dip into their native tongue if needed. There will be no interpreters present. All will be staying, alongside Francis, in the Domus Sanctae Marthae guesthouse in the Vatican.
Aside Maradiaga, the cardinals are: George Pell, archbishop of Sydney; Sean O'Malley, archbishop of Boston; Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, archbishop of Kinshasa; Giuseppe Bertollo, governor of the Vatican City state; Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, archbishop emeritus of Santiago; Oswald Gracias, archbishop of Mumbai; and Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich and Freising.
....
Taken from: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/30/pope-francis-meet-cardinals-church-reforms
In a move already billed as a potentially critical moment for Francis's six-month-old papacy, the multinational group of "outsider" cardinals is flying in to Rome from all corners of the globe to present him with ideas for how to reform the Vatican and the church worldwide.
The panel – officially named the Council of Cardinals – was hailed as a revolutionary move when it was formed in April shortly after Francis's election. One observer said that, in its apparent embrace of a more collegial style of church governance, it was the "most important step in the history of the church for the past 10 centuries".
However, the pope's spokesman, Federico Lombardi, on Monday stressed that the arrangement had its limits. Although the cardinals would be called on to advise the pope and would give the church another "means of consultation", there was no question about who would be having the final say.
"A council advises, and he who decides is the pope," he said.
The eight cardinals appointed in April by Francis come from all over the world, including the United States, Australia, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo. None has worked in the Vatican's bloated and dysfunctional bureaucracy. All, said Lombardi, were equipped "with great experience of the church's problems in the world".
A personal decree known as a "chirografo" issued by Francis said their official task was to advise him on "governance of the universal church" and help him revise the Pastor Bonus, the apostolic constitution on the curia drawn up by Pope John Paul II in 1988.
Indications are that that revision could be dramatic and could possibly lead to a new constitution.
The charismatic co-ordinator of the council, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, the archbishop of Tegucigalpa in Honduras and president of the Caritas Internationalis charity, told Italian television last weekend: "No, that constitution is over. Now it is something different. We need to write something different."
Lombardi, however, said "no startling decisions" were expected from this first meeting, which will go on until Thursday afternoon. In his recent interview with the Italian Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica, Francis said reform would take time and required a period of "discernment".
He also said he was looking to create not "token consultations, but real consultations" with the eight cardinals, several of whom have been outspoken in their criticism of subjects including curial disfunction and the clerical sex abuse scandal.
"I want to see that this is a real, not ceremonial consultation," he added, saying the council had been born out of the general congregations in the lead-up to the conclave – meetings in which cardinals from outside the curia voiced extreme concern over its activities. They ended up voting for Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, an Argentinian who said later he had come "from the end of the world".
Throughout the three-day summit, the cardinals will meet with the pope and a secretary in a private library in the apostolic palace. The pope's role will be primarily to listen to what the men have to say, said Lombardi. The main language will be Italian but the cardinals will be able to dip into their native tongue if needed. There will be no interpreters present. All will be staying, alongside Francis, in the Domus Sanctae Marthae guesthouse in the Vatican.
Aside Maradiaga, the cardinals are: George Pell, archbishop of Sydney; Sean O'Malley, archbishop of Boston; Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, archbishop of Kinshasa; Giuseppe Bertollo, governor of the Vatican City state; Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, archbishop emeritus of Santiago; Oswald Gracias, archbishop of Mumbai; and Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich and Freising.
....
Taken from: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/30/pope-francis-meet-cardinals-church-reforms
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