Ever since he was elected pope, Pope Francis has been trying to reform the Vatican Curia, the bureaucracy that is supposed to help the pope in his ministry to the universal church. He has had only limited success — not surprisingly, since every pope since the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s has also Read more
As Francis did last month when he appointed a fellow Jesuit, Fr. Juan Guerrero Alves, to take charge at the Secretariat for the Economy, the pope is filling a high-level Vatican post with a known friend and supporter of his reform agenda. And some observers wonder if this is the start of a trend that Read more
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. Read more
Refugee and migrant issues, including human trafficking are such important concerns that Pope Francis will be taking direct personal responsibility for them in a new Vatican department. The department (or dicastery) merges four Vatican offices into one and will be handling peace, the environment and human trafficking issues. The Vatican issued the statutes on Wednesday Read more
There are many ways of analyzing the fault lines in the Vatican, but perhaps the most time-honored (if also often exaggerated) is the tension between an Italian old guard and pretty much everybody else. By conventional political logic, anyway, Saturday saw the Italians notch a fairly big win. It could turn out, however, to be Read more
A US cardinal said he has some unanswered questions about the practicality of proposed reforms in the Roman Curia, the Vatican’s main administrative bureaucracy, although he praised efforts to clean up Vatican finances and to combat clergy sexual abuse. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston, also told Crux in a wide-ranging interview on Saturday that Read more
Former soccer star Diego Maradona has urged Pope Francis to transform the Vatican from “a lie” into an institution that gives more to the people. 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 Read more
Characterizations of Pope Francis abound. In something that hasn’t happened since 1979, when John Paul II did it, Pope Francis this week made the Time magazine cover story everywhere in the world except the United States – which went with a story about the ‘not guilty’ verdict in a case against a white man who Read more