Pope listens to Vatican officials as reforms start

Pope Francis met for three hours with Vatican officials on Tuesday to hear their questions and suggestions about his ongoing reform of the Vatican bureaucracy.

Some 30 people attended the meeting, which included the heads of the Vatican’s eight congregations and 12 councils, as well as top officials from the Church’s tribunals and from the administration of Vatican state.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s outgoing secretary of state, was also present in the meeting.

Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s spokesman, said in a statement that the pope had the opportunity to listen to the “considerations and advice” of his closest collaborators in Rome.

Lombardi said Pope Francis had already met all the Vatican’s department heads personally in recent months.

The reform process, according to Lombardi, will have another “important moment” when a group of eight cardinals summoned by the pope to oversee reforms for the Curia meets for the first time in Rome on Oct. 1-3.

The group includes Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston and is chaired by Honduran Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga.

Allegations of widespread mismanagement and corruption in the Curia overshadowed the final years of Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy, including the so-called Vatileaks affair.

Many of the scandals were at least partly blamed on inefficiency and lack of collaboration among Vatican bureaucrats, who are mostly Italian churchmen.

Sources

RNS/The Washington Post

Catholic News Service

Image: KomoNews

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