The Vatican’s new secretary of state, considered one of the most powerful in the Vatican, said this week that he knows Pope Francis intends to reform his office.
Archbishop Pietro Parolin, who took over as the Vatican’s secretary of state Oct. 15, said the pope and the group of eight cardinals advising him on church reform have made clear they are looking at reforms to his office.
“I don’t know if it’s a different name or if they want to give it a new structure,” Parolin told members of the press Wednesday.
“The important thing is for it to become a structure that is at the service of the pope as it has always been, but that it can be enhanced,” the National Catholic Reporter said in a report.
Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office, said during a briefing Wednesday morning that Parolin had met with the eight cardinals and the pope briefly Tuesday afternoon.
While the meetings of the cardinals’ group are happening behind closed doors, reform of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State has come up frequently in conversations with Vatican officials and prelates in recent months, the NCR’s online report said.
Parolin’s predecessor in the role, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, had come under criticism for some of the gaffes of the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, which culminated with the arrest of Benedict’s butler in 2012 for leaking sensitive Vatican documents.
Parolin, who has nearly 30 years of experience in the Vatican’s diplomatic corps, previously served as the apostolic nuncio to Venezuela.
SOURCE
National Catholic Reporter
Image: NCR Online
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