And some observers wonder if this is the start of a trend that could continue in 2020, when at least two more such posts are expected to come free.

• French Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who has led the Congregation of Bishops since 2010, will conclude a second five-year term in the role on June 30.
• Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, who heads the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, passed the conclusion date of his first term this Nov. 23.

"Francis is really beginning to put together a team of his own inside the Curia," said Marco Politi, a respected Italian journalist who is author of nearly a dozen books on the Vatican.

"Many of Francis' supporters have criticized him behind the scenes for not having put in place a spoils system at the Vatican and for not putting people dedicated to his reform agenda in key posts," said Politi, a former long-time Vatican correspondent for the daily newspaper La Repubblica.

"Future appointments to the posts now occupied by Cardinals Sarah and Ouellet will permit Francis to create a more uniform leadership at the Vatican's highest levels," he said.

Although Francis' plans for Ouellet and Sarah are unknown, Ouellet turned 75, the traditional retirement age for bishops and cardinals, last June. Sarah will turn 75 in June 2020.

A third Vatican official who appears near retirement is Italian Cardinal Beniamino Stella, the prefect for the Congregation of the Clergy, who is 78 and passed the limit on his five-year term on Sept. 21, 2018.

The Vatican does not publicize Francis' choices on whether or not to renew his officials' terms of office.

In response to a question regarding whether Francis has renewed Stella or Sarah's mandates, the director of the Vatican Press Office, Matteo Bruni, noted that heads of Vatican offices frequently serve beyond the dates of expiration of their terms, at the pope's discretion.

Massimo Faggioli, a theologian and historian who has written extensively on Francis' papacy, said he did not know whether the pontiff might be wanting to free up space at the top of Vatican offices in order to call in allies.

"This is an open question for me," said Faggioli, a professor at Villanova University. Earlier in his papacy, said the theologian, Francis appeared to think that "he could do without the Curia."

"I don't know if he has changed his mind compared to the first years," said Faggioli. "It is very possible."

Neither Ouellet nor Sarah have openly criticized Francis. Both have, however, made clear that they disagree with the pontiff in certain areas.

Ouellet, for example, publicly opposed the proposal of October's Synod of Bishops for the Amazon to allow for the priestly ordination of married men on a limited basis in order to meet sacramental needs in the nine-nation region.

And the cardinal held a book launch at the Vatican days before the start of the synod for a volume enunciating his views, titled Friends of the Bridegroom: For a Renewed Vision of Priestly Celibacy.

For his part, Sarah famously waited a year to implement a 2014 request from Francis that he issue a decree making clear that women are allowed to participate in Holy Thursday foot-washing rites. Continue reading

Stella, who is the prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, believes if the laity were more involved in priestly formation, the crisis facing the church would not be so grave.

In his view, clericalism has led to "a distorted view of authority" that has contributed to the Church's problems of sexual abuse and the abuse of power and conscience.

"Even the work of the dicastery attests that many situations in the lives of priests — generated by loneliness, tiredness and misunderstandings — would not have degenerated or would have been addressed in time if there had been listening, accompaniment and sharing by bishops and the entire Christian community," Stella says.

Addressing the problem of abuse does not depend "solely on the hierarchy and priests," Stella notes.

"On the contrary, precisely clericalism and often the reduction of the church to an elite class has generated an anomalous way of understanding authority that has devalued baptismal grace and, not infrequently, has contributed to forms of abuse, especially on a person's conscience," he says.

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• Crux Now
• Image: Crux Now