Preach the Gospel: The Vatican’s conversion

Thursday, March 24th, 2022

Pope Francis offered his initial diagnosis of the Roman Curia a long time ago – on December 22, 2014 to be precise – and it was severe.

He was still riding the momentum of his recent election to the papacy at the time, and before a gathering of stunned cardinals and top Vatican officials he read out a list of fifteen “curial diseases” that he said were eating away at the Church’s central structure from within.

Among them, the pope cited rivalries, vanity and “spiritual Alzheimer’s”.

This brutal realization sounded the charge against the court-like logic that withers the government of the Church and distracts it from its essential mission: the proclamation of the Gospel.

The new apostolic constitution that was released this past Saturday (March 19) is the culmination of this process of reforming the Curia. It is significant that the Gospel occupies the first place, even in the title: Praedicate evangelium (Preach the Gospel).

The text bears the seeds of several revolutions.

We find there the imprint of Pope Francis, who has always insisted on the primacy of the encounter with Christ and on the fight against clericalism.

Doctrinal issues are no longer at the top of the organizational chart.

As for the clerics, they lose their quasi-monopoly on the governing bodies. All the faithful – lay or consecrated, men or women – will be able to preside over a dicastery (the pope’s “ministries”), whereas today these are mostly in the hands of cardinals.

It would be unwise to place too much hope in seemingly organizational changes.

But this powerful reform, if fully implemented, is likely to change not only the way the Church functions, but also the way it proclaims its message to the world.

This is especially true if the spirit underlying the reform spreads in a capillary way to dioceses, parishes and even the hearts of the Catholic people.

In Christian parlance, there is another word for “revolution”. It’s called “conversion”.