03 January 2018 | by Marco Politi

Choppy waters for the ship of St Peter: Francis, a progress report

The Tablet

Francis: a progress report

On the second anniversary of his election, Pope Francis mused: “I have the sensation that my pontificate will be short. Four or five years …” In a few weeks’ time, on 13 March 2018, five years will be up – yet he has no intention of resigning.
Francis is determined to step down the day that he feels his strength significantly diminishing; meanwhile, his supporters in the Roman Curia and in the local Churches worldwide are encouraging him to stay for as long as he can. His vision of the Church as community, not as monarchy; his reshaping of the bishops’ conferences and of the College of Cardinals; his various reforms to the way the Church is governed – these impulses and initiatives need time to trickle down and bed themselves in.

But, more than changes of structures or of canon law or even of personnel, Francis is seeking to foster a new mentality and attitude among the faithful. The Pope who chose the name of Poor Saint Francis of Assisi is calling on Catholics to be active witnesses of the Gospel, not simply passive believers. What he needs more than anything to allow the new way of thinking to take root and grow is time. And time – as both his allies and his opponents are well aware – is running out.
It is a hard job to lead a community of 1.3 billion men and women. During his recent trip to Myanmar, Francis had to take almost a full day of rest on arriving in Yangon, interrupted by just one 15-minute meeting with the head of the military. Last month, the Argentinian Pope celebrated his eighty-first birthday. At 82, Pope Benedict was planning to resign; at 83, he had abandoned the apostolic palace.
Yet Francis is more dynamic than ever. The Synod on Youth in October this year is one of the most important topics on his agenda. A trip to India is envisaged. In May, he is to welcome in Rome the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. In August, a quick trip to Ireland is expected. And, looming larger, is the great China issue: negotiations with Beijing proceed “slowly and with patience”, as the Pope underlines. The second half of the pontificate is beginning.
Looking back to the first part of his papacy, some impressive results were achieved. The reform of the Curia continues, and the central government of the Church has become somewhat slimmer. This was one of the major issues that the cardinals raised during their official pre-conclave meetings prior to Francis’ election. Six former pontifical councils (Laity, Family, Justice and Peace, Cor Unum, Migrants, Health Care Workers) have been merged into two dicasteries: one for Laity, Family and Life, under Cardinal Kevin Farrell, and one for Promoting Integral Human Development, under Cardinal Peter Turkson. It means a Roman Curia with fewer “princes” in purple.
Meanwhile, a cautious decentralisation has begun. Local bishops now have the right, under some circumstances, to declare a marriage null without needing the approval of Rome. Bishops’ conferences have the right to revise liturgical texts without waiting for the formal approval (recognitio) of Rome: a ratification (confirmatio) is enough. And, in the wake of the Jubilee of Mercy, priests all over the world – not just ones chosen by local bishops – are now authorised to grant absolution to those who confess to having procured an abortion: including even the schismatic clerics of the Pius X fraternity.
Women – although still too few of them – have moved into the high ranks of the Curia. Gabriella Gambino, a professor of bioethics, and Judge Linfa Ghisoni were appointed last November as undersecretaries at the new Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life. The academic and former US ambassador to the Holy See, Mary Ann Glendon, is a member of the board of the Vatican bank. The British social theorist, Margaret Archer, is president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. The commission on women deacons has silently sent the Pope its conclusions; he is currently studying them.
Francis has also moved to implement the wishes of the cardinal-electors with regard to the Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR), better known as the Vatican bank. Each of its approximately 18,000 accounts has been scrutinised by an independent agency. All the so-called “external accounts” controlled by politicians or business people with nothing to do with church activities have been blocked or shut down.
Moneyval, the Council of Europe’s money-laundering agency, has concluded that the Vatican has now addressed most of the weaknesses in its legal and regulatory framework. The Holy See has adopted the UN Convention against Corruption; and the Vatican has finally signed agreements of cooperation with several countries in order to jointly prosecute financial crimes.
Francis’ papacy has brought a new atmosphere to the pastoral life of the local Churches. The Church has relaxed its century-long obsession with issues of sexual morality. The contraceptive pill, cohabitation before marriage, divorce and homosexual relationships no longer loom on the landscape as fixed, non-negotiable principles. Parish priests feel relieved: they are no longer forced into impossible pastoral situations.
The Church is not a “customs house”, Francis has said, but a field hospital. And the Eucharist is not for the perfect but for sinners in search of the right path. His words and gestures have refreshed the life of the people of God more effectively than his encyclicals, and have taken the message of God’s mercy far beyond the boundaries of the Church.
As the second act of Francis’ papacy opens, however, we can see that it is burdened with serious difficulties and problems. Last year brought a backlash in a sensitive field: the Vatican financial system. Cardinal George Pell, Prefect of the Secretariat for Economy, left Rome hastily in June for his native Australia to face historical sexual offence allegations. In two months’ time, he is summoned to attend a hearing in Melbourne that might last several weeks.
In Rome, the “Ranger” (Pell’s nickname, copyright Pope Francis) was known for his relentless determination to cast light on the feudal tangle of the different budgets and household expenses of the multiple Vatican departments and administrations. It was Pell who revealed that several hundred million euros were “hidden” in the accounts of Vatican administrations without being registered in the official budget of the Holy See.
Pell was hated by the curial bureaucracy and its barons. No one is now continuing his efforts. No vice-prefect has been appointed by the Pope in Pell’s absence, and no one in Rome is putting money on Pell’s comeback. This void is not a good sign. Meanwhile, at almost at the same time, Libero Milone, the first auditor-general in the history of the Vatican state, was fired. It was alleged that he had “illegally engaged an external company to conduct investigative activities on the private life of Holy See personnel”.
That a highly respected professional was thrown out of his pivotal office without any evidence being made public looks like a step backwards in the battle for transparency in the Vatican finances. Months have passed and again no replacement has been announced. Then, last November, the vice-director of the Vatican bank, Giulio Mattietti, was fired, again with minimal explanation. These, too, are bad signs.
In another area of concern, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors does not seem in the best shape. It has lost two distinguished members, the only ones who themselves were survivors of clerical sex abuses: Marie Collins and Peter Saunders. Collins resigned after accusing Cardinal Gerhard Müller (then still Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) of “lack of cooperation”. In 2015, the Pope had accepted a proposal made by the commission to establish a special court that would put on trial bishops alleged to have been “negligent” in sex abuse cases. Last year, it emerged that Cardinal Müller – with others in the Curia – had sabotaged the project.
There is no doubt about Francis’ “zero tolerance” policy on clerical abuse, but there is no doubt, either, about the passive resistance of many bishops’ conferences around the world to this line. It is still not accepted in every country that a bishop should be duty-bound to report incidents of clerical sex abuse to the civil authorities. Francis, personally addressing the commission last September, promised that in future every priest convicted of abuse will be laicised.
Approval ratings for the Argentinian pontiff continue to be very high, and not only among Catholics. Far beyond confessional boundaries, he is recognised as a moral authority and geopolitical leader. His stand on migration, refugees, on the ever-growing inequality between rich and poor, on sex trafficking and the “new slavery” that exploits millions of workers, and his repeated emphasis on the tight link between environmental deterioration and growing social injustice, has made a broad impact on the public.
Inside the Church, meanwhile, a sort of civil war is going on. Opponents say Francis is a communist, a feminist, a populist, or is in such thrall to the spirit of the age that he has dramatically squeezed the sacred from the papacy, betraying tradition and divine law. It would be a mistake to consider the Roman Curia the main or only centre of opposition. For sure, the curial apparatus is partially frustrated and dismayed, since it feels that under Francis it is losing its almost military aura as Catholicism’s chief of staff. But broad resistance to Francis has roots all over the world in the local churches.
“No pope in the last 100 years has had to face such an opposition amidst the bishops and the clergy,” Andrea Riccardi, the church historian and founder of the Community of Sant’Egidio, has said. During the two Synods on the Family, in 2014 and 2015, it became clear that a majority of the bishops – the great majority of them selected in the past three decades by John Paul II or Benedict XVI for their unquestioning obedience to Rome – were not prepared to support a clear strategy of reform. At the end of the day, the reformers found themselves in a minority.
There are many reasons for the resistance to Francis’ reforms. Some bishops are simply committed theological conservatives, and others stick to tradition because of a temperamental preference for “how it always was”; they are puzzled by rapid changes in society and feel safer keeping to the road that they know. The same is true of the junior clergy; young priests are often the firmest in their resolve to resist Francis’ reforms. Together, these bishops and priests create a sort of marsh, hampering the Pope’s progress and slowing down the work of the new bishops he appoints.
At his annual pre-Christmas meeting with members of the Roman Curia in 2016, Francis complained about the “hidden resistance, born of fearful or hardened hearts, content with the empty rhetoric of spiritual window dressing, typical of those who say they are ready for change yet want everything to remain as it was before”. Even more trenchantly, he denounced the “malicious resistance, which springs up in misguided minds and comes to the fore when the devil (often cloaked in sheep’s clothing) inspires ill intentions”.
Last month, at his 2017 meeting with them, he spoke of the existence within the Curia of an “unbalanced and debased mindset of plots and small cliques”, of a real “cancer” leading to self-centredness. On top of that, he emphasised the danger of traitors, persons chosen to support and implement reforms who instead “let themselves be corrupted by ambition or vainglory”. His harsh words were met by a sullen show of obedience.
As for the radical opposition to Francis, it has chosen the way of a reckless escalation of hostility to the Pope, using the post-synodal exhortation Amoris Laetitia as its platform. There have been organised petitions to the College of Cardinals, the dubia (“theological doubts”) signed by four cardinals – Raymond Burke, Walter Brandmüller, Carlo Caffarra and Joachim Meisner, the latter two since deceased – a fake Osservatore Romano mocking Bergoglio, and posters taunting him plastered on walls in the centre of Rome, where they were seen by thousands of tourists and Romans. And there has been a relentless war against him on ultra-conservative websites.
The Pope never agreed to meet the four dubia cardinals. This may have been a mistake: it allowed his critics in the Curia to say that his door is open to everybody – except to those who dare to criticise him. And now, the hostility, open and undercover, is increasing. Cardinal Burke wants to “correct” him. The latest “filial correction”, originally signed by 62 lay and clerical Catholic scholars, accuses him of leading Catholics into heresy. A fresh ebook, The Dictator Pope, slams Bergoglio for ruling “through a webnet of lies, intrigues, espionage, distrust and fear”.
This is a technique resembling the Tea Party in the US. That movement did not succeed in overthrowing President Barak Obama, but it exerted great influence on the following presidential elections. Similarly, the anti-Francis radicals aim to delegitimise his papacy day by day, making it impossible for his successor to continue his reform strategy. There shall be no place for a Francis II!
The success of the second half of Francis’ papacy will turn on the success of his reforms, including progress on the reshaping of the church hierarchy and the outcome of the manoeuvres around the succession, which are silently beginning behind the scenes. For this reason, his supporters are gently pushing the Pope to begin a thorough reorganisation of the Roman Curia following the dismissal of Cardinal Gerhard Müller from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Francis has never liked the spoils system, but it seems urgent that a team committed to reform is in place at the top of the Church, where half of the people still belong to the Ratzinger era. What is needed now, his supporters insist, is that he should appoint bishops and cardinals really committed to his approach to doctrine and tradition in all key positions.
“Tradition,” Francis told the French communications scientist Dominique Wolton in 2016, “is not an unchangeable bank account. It is the doctrine going forward … the essential does not change, but it grows and develops.” And how does tradition grow? “It grows like a person,” Francis emphasised, “through dialogue, which is like the milk for the baby … Dialogue with the world around us … If one is not engaged in dialogue, one is not able to grow, one stands still, one stays little, a dwarf.”
This new year will be a vital one in seeing how far Francis succeeds in steering Peter’s ship along this route.
Marco Politi is a journalist and writer who has followed Vatican issues for more than 40 years. His most recent book is Pope Francis Among the Wolves (Columbia University Press).

Friday, January 5, 2018