Signs of Departure
Eight months after his election, having completed his first trip abroad, Pope Leo XIV has given us a pretty good sense of his theological and political visions and his fundamental continuities with Pope Francis. But he has also shown signs of departure from his predecessor, especially in how he governs the Vatican and the Curia. This has always been an important factor when it comes to understanding a pope—but given Francis’s personal governing style and Leo’s U.S. roots, it takes on even greater significance.
The day after his election, Leo announced that he had provisionally confirmed the members of the Roman Curia donec aliter provideatur—“until it is otherwise provided.” He later followed with several important appointments. The first, in July, was naming a new president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors: Msgr. Thibault Verny (sixty years old), archbishop of Chambéry and bishop of Saint-Jean-de Maurienne and Tarentaise (France), and already a member of the commission. Verny succeeds Cardinal Sean O’Malley. There’s the sense that Verny was chosen to solve some of the problems of the PCPM—especially the lack of clarity on its mission. Verny was president of the French bishops’ commission on the issue, and Leo seems less skeptical or fearful than Francis was about the thorough approach the French took to investigating the abuse crisis. This could affect churches in other countries, beginning with Italy—this became clear from the pointed exchange between the PCPM and the Italian bishops’ conference after the commission’s published report criticized the Italian church’s handling of cases.
In September, Leo appointed a new prefect of the Dicastery for the Bishops: Archbishop Filippo Iannone from Naples—a Carmelite, jurist, and canon lawyer with extensive experience in courts, pontifical universities, and the archdiocese. His appointment to the post that Robert Prevost occupied from 2023 to 2025 was not a surprise. Iannone was deeply involved with the 2021 revision of the Code of Canon Law’s “Book VI: Penal Sanctions in the Church,” one of seven books codifying the Latin rite of the Catholic Church, with updated descriptions of the crimes of sexual abuse. Iannone is experienced in assessing allegations of clerical abuse and played a key role in expanding the reach of Vos Estis Lux Mundi (2019), a framework for investigating abuse, to include lay Catholic leaders. This appointment is further evidence of Leo’s intention to address the issue of abuse.
Leo has a doctorate in canon law himself, and some of his other appointments suggest he’s not afraid of reversing some of the reforms of Francis’s pontificate. In November, he reestablished the central sector for the diocese of Rome, which had been dissolved by Francis in October 2024 in an attempt to draw the clergy and institutions of the city center into closer solidarity with those on the outskirts, where most Romans live but where parishes and priests are comparatively few. Francis was hoping to counteract the sense that the center was becoming a “living museum,” admired by millions but insufficiently integrated into the daily pastoral life of the metropolis. This never sat comfortably with many of the priests who minister in the city of Rome and struggled to implement it in practice.
Leo also restored the role of the Prefecture of the Papal Household, with his November appointment of the Nigerian Augustinian Fr. Edward Daniang Daleng as vice regent. This brought a close to years of institutional uncertainty dating to December 2012, with Archbishop Georg Gänswein’s dual role as prefect and personal secretary to Benedict XVI, which continued after Benedict’s resignation in February 2013 until his death.
Leo has also taken up the project of synodality begun by his predecessor. In July, he added two new study groups to the original ten post-synodal groups established by Francis. They are tasked with studying liturgical topics with a synodal perspective as well as the statute of episcopal conferences, ecclesial assemblies, and Particular Councils.
Perhaps the most visible changes are how Leo works with the Roman Curia. Leo clearly relies more than Francis did on the work and the institutional mission of the Vatican dicasteries. In November, he presided over a meeting of all dicastery leaders. More telling are the two speeches he has given to the Curia. In May, he reinterpreted the old adage “popes pass, the Curia remains,” which is often used to explain the power of the Vatican system to slow the pace of change. But Leo said:
The Curia is the institution that preserves and transmits the historical memory of a Church, of the ministry of its bishops. This is very important. Memory is an essential element in a living organism. It is not only directed to the past but nourishes the present and guides the future. Without memory, the path is lost, it loses its sense of direction. Here, dear friends, is the first thought I would like to share with you: to work in the Roman Curia means to contribute to keeping the memory of the Apostolic See alive, in the vital sense I have just mentioned, so that the Pope’s ministry may be implemented in the best way. And, by analogy, this can also be said of the services of Vatican City State.
Similar sympathy for the Curia’s work was evident in a December speech in which he distanced himself implicitly from what had become a tradition under Francis: the dreaded pre-Christmas public scolding of the Curia. With Leo, there seems to be an overall effort to improve morale with the publication of the General Regulations of the Roman Curia and its staff. Leo also reinstated the “conclave bonus” (abolished by Francis) for Vatican employees who serve through the hectic days of the election of a new pope. In his relationships with top and mid-level officials, Leo seems intent on reassuring them about their roles and significance. An important example of this is the greater role for the Secretariat of State. Both Benedict XVI and Francis, in different ways, limited its prerogatives, which the curial reforms of Paul VI in 1967 and John Paul II in 1988 had strengthened—not just for the diplomatic work of the Holy See, but also for the coordinating of all dicasteries. Additionally, Leo’s recent appointments signal a pivot of the Secretariat of State from a mostly Italian-speaking entity to more English-speaking.
Finally, Leo is holding his first consistory, in response to a pre-conclave request by the cardinals to be more regularly consulted by the pope. Francis, contrary to expectations, consulted only twice, in 2014 and 2022, with all the cardinals in the consistory, even though in 2024 he increased the number of cardinal electors to 142—the largest college of electors in Church history.
Leo’s decisions are also important for how they signal a different understanding of synodality in the governance of the Church: not as a replacement of collegiality (collaboration between and within bodies made of equals), but as something that needs collegiality. Francis understood synodality as part of the strong personal relationship between the pope and the people, and this worked to the detriment of collegiality in the Vatican.
On the other hand, exactly one month after his election, in April 2013, Francis created the Council of Cardinals “with the task of assisting [him] in the governance of the universal Church and of studying a project for the revision of the Apostolic Constitution Pastor Bonus on the Roman Curia.” During his pontificate, the C9 met several times every year and functioned as the privy council of the pope. As time went by, it lost meaning and visibility, and Francis never clarified its role within the institutional architecture of the Vatican. The C9 continued to meet until the end of 2024. It could have been one of the most important institutional innovations created by Francis, but it died with him, and Leo has never mentioned it. This reflects Leo’s different understanding of the role of the Roman Curia as part of a Church theology that is more institutional, less movement-like, and less personal.
Leo has introduced, in his gentle style, a different way to govern the Vatican—one that is more mindful of the need to work together with all those in the hierarchy. It may signal the beginning of what could be a profound change in the way the Curia works. As Thomas Reese put it recently, “It is time for American management practices in the Vatican. If an American pope cannot do that, we will have more scandals in the future.”
It’s not as if the Curia and the Vatican have never acted to change the system. During the Napoleonic era in the early nineteenth century, the shock of Pius VI’s kidnapping to France (where he died) and the occupation of Rome spurred the implementation of then-modern bureaucratic practices. The definitive loss of the papal states in 1870 did the rest. For the Curia, it was a change more profound than Vatican I, Vatican II, or any papal reform. But that was two centuries ago. Maybe the U.S.-born pope can accomplish something of similar scale—without, of course, such drastic outside intervention.
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