They say the hot-off-the-press document will be released sometime today, New Zealand time.

The document

Entitled "The Bishop of Rome - Primacy and Synodality in Ecumenical Discussions and Responses to the Encyclical Ut unum sint", the new document from the Pope's ecumenical office continues from a Pope John Paul II 1995 encyclical.

The Vatican says the magisterial text was groundbreaking for Christian unity at the time.

The Vatican press office explained that the document held out the prospect of a new self-image and a different way of exercising the papacy, particularly with regard to the churches of the East.

When the John Paul document was being explored, he had invited other Christian churches to seek ways in which the papal office could be understood as a "service of mercy" to all churches in a "fraternal, patient dialogue" with Rome.

The Vatican's ecumenical department subsequently set up its own dialogue forums with several churches. They deliberated for decades and the results of those deliberations are now available.

Pope Francis supported the project from the outset when he defined himself first and foremost as the Bishop of Rome.

He also decreed the revival of the historic title"Patriarch of the West" which had been cancelled by his predecessor Benedict XVI.

Renewed form of the papal office?

The Vatican press office also points to the Pope's aim to give the Catholic world Church a "synodal" constitution.

His interpretation of synodality means the Pope alone would no longer makes decisions from above.

Bishops, theologians and lay people would be involved in consultations on fundamental Church issues.

This would make the Catholic Church more similar in its structure and functioning to the churches of the East. These have always had a synodal organisation, along with communities that emerged from the Reformation.

The Vatican describes the new document on the papacy as a "study document" which the Pope has approved.

Its purpose is to bring together the responses to "Ut unum sint" and the ecumenical dialogue on primacy and synodality.

It will make a proposal for a renewed form of papal office that can also be recognised by the other churches.

Some in the Vatican believe the proposal could see the Pope have regular and equal-footing meetings with other patriarchs and church leaders.

Source

• katholisch.de

That headline appeared in the October 6, 1972 issue of the National Catholic Reporter.

"If insiders' reports are accurate, Pope Paul is faced with a threatened palace revolt over proposed changes in the procedures used to elect a pope," wrote Desmond O'Grady, the now-deceased Australian who was NCR's very first Rome correspondent.

O'Grady identified the three men who warned they would resign as Cardinal Franjo Seper, the Yugoslavian who was then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and two Italians — Cardinal Carlo Confalonieri (head of the Congregation for Bishops) and Cardinal Giuseppe Siri (archbishop of Genoa).

He said these three senior clerics feared Paul VI would cave into demands to substantially alter who could participate in the conclave that elects the Roman Pontiff.

The new plan evidently was to allow the presidents of national episcopal conferences to be part of the electoral body and to restrict the vote of the cardinals to only those who were in charge of Vatican offices or local dioceses at the time of the "sede vacante" (i.e. at the death or resignation of the pope).

Episcopal collegiality in the spirit of Vatican II

The proposal had been around for some time. One of its most vocal advocates was Cardinal Michele Pellegrino of Turin in Northern Italy.

Almost immediately after Paul VI named him bishop in September 1965, just a month before the start of the fourth and final session of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Pellegrino began clamouring for changes to the conclave's membership.

His views found substantial support among a good number of Council Fathers, but also stiff opposition from several heavyweights who were fixtures of the Roman Curia's old guard.

The opponents claimed any change in the papal electoral system could undermine the Bishop of Rome's standing as the Vicar of Christ and would reduce the pope to a sort of president of the combined local Churches.

But those who supported Cardinal Pellegrino's proposal — and they exist even to this day — believed that a conclave restricted to cardinals, which the Roman Pontiff chooses independently and at his own discretion, was not in line with the principle of episcopal collegiality in the spirit of Vatican II.

One of the most outspoken on this point was Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens of Malines-Brussels (Belgium).

Pope Francis converges with Cardinal Suenens

In a long and carefully worded interview published in May 1969 in the French periodical Informations Catholiques Internationales, he argued — as he did in a book written several months earlier — for practical changes that would better foster co-responsibility at all levels of the Church.

Suenens' interview, which stretched over fifteen pages, was extremely important at the time of its publication, which was just a little more than three years after the Council.

Revisiting it today, some 53 years later, it is striking to see how the main topics he dealt with in that conversation are among the issues that Francis has made priorities in his pontificate.

They include rebalancing the relationship between the centre and the peripheries, papal primacy and collegiality, the bishop and his people, life and law, and the pope and the Roman Curia. And they also entail the status and mission of papal nuncios and, of course, the role of the College of Cardinals.

The current pope has given much attention to addressing these issues, save the last one.

His practice of giving the red hat to men in countries, dioceses and offices that have never before been headed by a cardinal does not address the issues that most concerned reformers like Cardinals Pellegrino and Suenens.

Paul VI takes another look

The problem is not just geographics. As the late Primate of Belgium pointed out in his 1969 interview, the College of Cardinals does not offer a "faithful image of (the Church's) diversity".

And the way its members are selected (arbitrarily and by the pope alone) does nothing to change that substantially. In fact, Suenens argued that it smacked of absolute monarchy and risked conveying who is in favour with the pope and who is not.

He also believed that lay people had to have some sort of role in helping select those in higher office, including the Roman Pontiff.

But Pope Paul, who was a close friend of Suenens', moved carefully on the issue. During a consistory to name new cardinals in early March 1973, he announced that he was looking into a different proposal to allow Eastern Church Patriarchs and the fifteen members of the Synod of Bishops' permanent council to participate in the conclave.

A few weeks later, he repeated this to officials in the Synod's secretariat. But, in the end, he did nothing.

That did not end the debate, however.

"A special enclave within the College of Bishops"

John R. Quinn, the late archbishop of San Francisco, offered a number of "possibilities" for changing the way the Roman Pontiff is elected in his 1999 book The Reform of the Papacy: the Costly Call to Christian Unity.

He acknowledged that the College of Cardinals was a "distinguished body" and that it "has performed great service to the popes and to the whole Church" during its thousand-year history.

But he said there were "three problems" that necessitated its reform — it is "a special enclave within the College of Bishops"; it's awkward relationship to the Eastern Churches; and its exclusive role in the election of the pope.

Quinn noted that the manner in which the Bishop of Rome is elected has changed over the course of the centuries. And while history shows that some of the earlier "procedures... were open to great abuse, it has also shown that the exclusive role of the cardinals in this process has also been open to abuse".

And while "confining the election to 120 cardinals at the most creates a manageable electoral body", he argued that this college "does not relate directly or structurally to the episcopal conferences".

Quinn insisted that "at least some of the presidents of conferences" merited a vote in the conclave. He also suggested representatives from religious orders and the laity "could be invited to express their view on the more important qualities they would like to see in the next pope".

The late archbishop admitted that it would be tricky to decide exactly who might be invited to do this, but said, "Whatever the problems involved, careful consideration should be given to how lay persons could be included."

Synodality and how bishops (and popes) are selected

All this sounds very much in sync with the synodal process that Pope Francis has been trying to make a constituent part of the Roman Catholic Church's communal life and decision-making process.

He has brought synodality — which includes the participation, in various ways, of all the People of God, ordained, lay and vowed religious — to bear on almost all areas of the Church, including the Roman Curia.

But he has done little to extend this to the selection and appointment of bishops and nothing to make it part of the election of the Roman Pontiff.

Francis has made scant use of the College of Cardinals as a consultative body.

But he is summoning all its members (both cardinal-electors and the men over 80 who have lost their vote in the conclave) to two days of meetings at end of August, only the third time he's held such a red-hatted summit in over nine years.

The stated reason is to "reflect on the new apostolic constitution Praedicate evangelium", the document he published on March 19 to put in place his reform of the Curia. Three months later, and despite the fact that the constitution went into effect on June 5, the text exists only in Italian.

What will happen in August?

A large number of cardinals, maybe more than half of them, do not have sufficient facility in Italian to read — let alone reflect on — this document. In any case, what will they be reflecting on? The reform is done.

It's now up to the pope to begin replacing the numerous Curia officials who are beyond retirement age or have worked many years at the Vatican, with new people who are willing to implement the reform energetically, collaboratively and according to the spirit with which it was written.

As for the meeting of cardinals in August, it's already been suggested here that it could be "the occasion and forum for Francis to make an important announcement about the future of his pontificate and when the cardinal-electors will have to exercise the one function reserved to them alone — elect the Bishop of Rome".

Of course, that is just a conjecture, but...

If Francis is planning to announce a date for his resignation, he may want to do it before all the world's cardinals.

It is not likely that he would step down immediately and probably not even in a few weeks' time, as Benedict did. What if, instead, he were to initiate a lengthier period of discernmentlasting several months or more?

Such discernment, if it is to include the participation of all the People of God, would require some concrete changes to at least the procedures the College of Cardinals follows.

It would be quite unusual if Francis were to do nothing

The 85-year-old pope has recently been keeping his cards to his chest more than usual, so we have no indication if he is actually even considering any significant changes to the conclave.

One might think it is a far too ambitious project for an elderly man who is currently giving so much of his energy to other major initiatives, most of them still in their infant stages.

But every pope in the last hundred years or so (at least those who have lived more than 33 days) has at least tweaked the apostolic constitution regulating the sede vacante and election of the Roman Pontiff.

It would be quite unusual if Francis, who has been revising or updating almost everything in the Church, were to do absolutely nothing.

Beware the ghosts of Pellegrino, Suenens and Quinn...

• Robert Mickens is LCI Editor in Chief.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

It is the first time in history, the bones, believed to be those of first Bishop of Rome's bones will leave the Vatican Grotto and be on display for public veneration.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president for the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, made the announcement in an editorial published in the Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, however exact details are not yet clear.

The bones were discovered during excavations of the necropolis under St Peter's Basilica in the 1940s near a monument erected in the fourth century to honour St. Peter.

No pope has ever declared the bones to be authentic.

Scientific tests were conducted on the bones in the 1950s and '60s, and Pope Paul VI said in 1968 that the "relics" of St. Peter had been "identified in a way which we can hold to be convincing."

The Year of Faith concludes on November 24, Feast of Christ the King.

Sources

• Rome Reports
• CNS
• Image: Flickr

Six months into his papacy, it is crystal clear that this Argentine cardinal, now Pope Francis, was very serious about what he said.

In his words and his deeds, in what he has done and what he is laying out to do, there is no doubt that the Catholic Church under Pope Francis is facing a game change.

One: Declericalizing the curia

The first and foremost task, of course, is to sweep clean the Roman Curia, which was a mess by the time of Benedict XVI's resignation. However, imposing change in a decrepit yet conceited governance system is no easy task.

"Things have gone downhill recently, but the Vatican is too big to function without procedures," one veteran Vatican official said.

The financial shenanigans and corruption have already been made public, but beneath that there have been the equally corrosive effects of careerism and palace intrigue, which have entrenched the governing apparatus of the papal state for centuries.

Yet Pope Francis is tactfully circumventing the old guard by forming his own secretariat, composed of a handful of Argentines and Italians, who work on the second floor of the Santa Marta hostel, the residence of choice ever since his elevation to the papacy in March.

As governed by this papal "mini-curia," Francis has not only established the eight-cardinal papal council to study the ways and means of curia reform, but he has also set up a group of mainly lay experts to streamline financial and administration procedures. The significance of the latter decision has already been borne out in the murmurings heard among many observers: is this an omen of declericalizing the headquarters of the Catholic Church?

Two: Reshaping the hierarchy

Fifty years after Vatican II, the Church hierarchy is still full of clericalism, thanks to the disproportionate presence of liturgical traditionalists who populated the upper echelons of the Church during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Aspirant clergy, who possess the pseudo-vanity mentality of diocesan chancery officials, often post themselves above, rather than among, the people who they purport to represent.

However, Francis made it clear that his ideal bishops are "close to the people…. and also by outward simplicity and austerity of life." Further, servants of God "should not have the psychology of princes."

What is absent from Francis' list of episcopal attributes were "loyalty and orthodoxy," the two criteria much emphasized by John Paul and Benedict.

It appears that Francis is doing his due diligence in order to pre-empt the tenacious clericalism, and all its bells and whistles, by severing the mythical umbilical cord tied to the divine lineage, which is habitually invoked for the self-serving purposes of many clerics.

In particular, the phrase "should not have the psychology of princes" may be aimed at the cardinals who form the Church's most elite members, some believe. One of them will one day become the "crown prince" and inherit the throne of the Bishop of Rome but that is no excuse for elitism. Continue reading

Sources

• Dr John C Keng in UCA News
• Image: The Los Angeles Times

Dr. John C Keng is a Canada-based freelance writer on Church and social issues.

The accounts of Papa Francesco are varied. Sometimes he's portrayed as a Catholic Dalai Lama - all sweetness and serenity in the face of the world's horrors and all the complexity that cultures and institutions create for innocent individuals.

He visits jailed refugees; he says Mass in prisons; as Bishop of Rome (which he prefers as his title to pope) he says parish Masses and hears confessions; he has announced his respectful and non-judgmental attitude to gays; he embraces the disabled and hugs babies. His reactions are warm, humane and tug at your heartstrings.

At other times he's expected to be a senior executive of a global agency that specializes in refitting and refocusing extensive and well resourced enterprises that have lost direction. He has inherited a Vatican in tumult over alleged corruption, inefficiency, arrogance and the influence of a "gay lobby" that has adversely affected good governance.

Francis has declared his hand on the sort of people who should be in leadership positions in the Church - simple, humble, poor, engaged and respectful people who are pastors rather than authoritarian rulers, and leaders who understand their own and their flock's frailty, and who are listeners first.

But he has also brought in McKinsey's, a consultancy firm that is a world leader in advising companies, even nations, on managing organizational and cultural change. Pope Francis has engaged the services of the chief executive of McKinsey's in Germany to advise him on how best to refit the Vatican to deliver on its mission.

In what may be the first sign of the German's work, the pope has appointed a committee of seven lay experts with a cleric as their secretary to advise on all matters financial and operational in the Vatican.

Even if someone inside the Vatican came up with the idea, it is the first time that the Vatican itself has looked outside its own processes and resources for guidance about how to do its job.

The recurrent resort of dioceses and religious congregations is to invoke canon law as the guide on how to do things, to search out the way people in the institution have done it before, to appeal to the constitutions or the memory of the founder as a guide to the next step.

What this betrays is the limited experience, lack of training for management and leadership and myopic approach that too many "leaders" in the Church take. Not for them to investigate how comparable problems are handled by institutions away from the Church.

In my experience, too many in clerical and religious life say, "We've always done it this way and I don't want to be the one to set a precedent by looking outside the Church (or the congregation) for guidance".

Result: stagnation, inefficiency and failure. It's living proof of one definition of insanity in which, after failing the first time, one attempts the same task using the same approach but expects a different result.

Opening up to new approaches and to what Pope Francis says he's not afraid of - making mistakes - has a much greater likelihood of bringing lasting change than just repeating a failed formula.

But how is he going to do it? As the Dalai Lama or as the management consultants would?

I can already hear the cries of dismay that come from Church people when there is even the mention of the use of management consultants. And those shrieking with dismay will invoke the criticism Pope Francis has made of a world grown inhuman by idolizing efficiency, speed and "results" as the only criteria to be used for assessing the appropriateness or otherwise of suggested approaches to fixing things.

But Papa Bergoglio is a Jesuit and as I write this on the feast of St Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits (July 31), it is well to remember something central to his spiritual legacy and the school of spirituality dearest to the pope.

For Ignatius and because of what we celebrate at Christmas - the Incarnation - the challenge is to find God in all things. There is no circumstance, resource or reach of human experience that is outside or beyond what God's grace can encompass.

Finding God in all things means to value secular expertise in itself and for the good it can be used to achieve for religious purposes.

So this pope's answer as to whether he's the Dalai Lama or a McKinsey's executive is simple: his approach will encompass both.

But as an actor on the world stage, as the leader of a multinational faith community, and as one leading a highly exposed and frequently reviewed life, he will also have to take into account the advice of a very seasoned political operator.

It was the belief of Benjamin Disraeli, the legendary 19th century British prime minister, that the key to success in public life was not so much what you do first. It's what you are going to do about the consequences of the consequences of what you do first that needs to be considered.

Everyone can only wish Pope Francis well as he discerns the way forward for Vatican reform and the rejuvenation of the Church.

• Michael Kelly SJ in ucanews.com
• Published with permission

Michael Kelly SJ is the executive director of the UCAnews