Leslie Ferrar, is one of six women Pope Francis appointed to the board overseeing the Holy See's finances.

Reforming the Vatican's management practices has been a priority for the Francis.

Ferrar shares the Pope's desire to ensure the Holy See's finances are handled with honesty and transparency.

She says she uses a simple check to decide if something meets the honesty and transparency test.

"If you were talking to a judge in court would you be able to explain what you had done and not be embarrassed?"

In a church setting: "Is what you are doing a sin? If it's a sin then you shouldn't be doing it. I think helping people understand what a sin is, rather than it just being okay … is what we need to do," Ferrar says.

Ferrar hails her appointment as a step toward "an element of diversity" as she is among the first female members of the council.

The fifteen person council is made up of eight cardinals and bishops and seven lay people. Just one of the lay people is male.

"It's up to me and my fellow lay members to make sure that it's not lip service and that it really will make a difference," she says.

"I think women in the Church in general, and women anywhere, want to make sure that any organisation is represented in the management of it by the people that participate in it."

A lifelong Catholic, Ferrar is no stranger to working with the Holy See. She has advised the Institute for the Works of Religion (ie the Vatican bank) on corporate governance.

"We introduced a huge amount of proper governance, basic processes and procedures."

"For me that was a huge step forward in getting the bank working in a proper way. Because it is a proper bank, and therefore it should run properly with proper processes. Did we get to absolutely where you should be? No, you never are. But huge steps were made."

Ferrar says she admires the pope's work on financial reform, and she points to the progress made in setting up a functioning regulatory system.

"I hope that I will really be able to help the Pope, because he is fundamentally a really good person, and he wants the Holy See to run properly, and we've got to try and help that happen."

She credits her parents, her upbringing and the nuns who taught her with helping her understand the value of integrity.

"You have to tell the truth, you have to act with integrity, even if it costs you. Don't bother getting up if you don't do that," she says.

Source

• The Tablet:
• Image: The Straits Times

Law professor Charlotte Kreuter-Kirchhof (pictured), who was recently appointed by Pope Francis as a member of the high-level group that oversees the Vatican's finances, says in her view "very much is possible in this area."

"But there are heated debates going on in the church about this at the moment."

A Duesseldorf-based professor, Kreuter-Kirchhof is one of six women Francis named as members of the Vatican's Council for the Economy last week. They are the first women in these top roles in the Vatican bureaucracy.

She says her appointment to the Council is a "clear sign of the desired cooperation between bishops, priests and laypeople and of the cooperation between men and women."

Council membership reflects a togetherness that is preparing the church for the future, she says.

Francis created the group in 2014 to supervise the financial activities of both the Vatican city-state and the offices of the Holy See.

Besides Kreuter-Kirchhof, the other new Council members her compatriot Marija Kolak, who is the chair of the National Association of German Cooperative Banks.

The other four women Francis appointed to the Council last week from Spain and the United Kingdom. Besides these, the Council includes one layman, an Italian, and eight prelates.

German Cardinal Reinhard Marx is the Council's leader.

In addition to her top role in the Vatican bureaucracy, Kreuter-Kirchhof, is the chair of the Hildegardis Association, which supports women in academic education and job training.

She says she is noticing encouraging signs of women's leadership in the German church.

"In many dioceses women are taking on central leadership tasks and making a substantial contribution to the future viability of our church."

Source

• NCR Online
• Image: The Tablet

In addition to the women, the only layman named to the council was Alberto Minali, a former executive at Italian insurance companies.

Statutes for the Council, which Francis approved in 2015, say the Council will have 15 members. These include eight cardinals or bishops and seven laypeople. Each person serves a five-year term.

The original seven all-male lay members had experience in business, finance or government.

The women's appointments to one of the Holy See's most important offices mark Francis's latest attempt to keep promises to improve gender balance, which women's groups have said were too slow in being realised.

So far Francis has appointed women to a variety of roles. These include a female deputy foreign minister, a female director of the Vatican Museums, and a female deputy head of the Vatican Press Office.

The six women include

• Leslie Jane Ferrar, Prince Charles's former treasurer,
• Charlotte Kreuter-Kirchhof, a German professor of law,
• Marija Kolak, president of Germany's national association of cooperative banks,
• Maria Concepcion Osacar Garaicoechea, a Spaniard and founding partner of the Azora Group and president of the Board of Azora Capital and Azora Gestion,
• Eva Castillo Sanz, former president of Merrill Lynch Spain and Portugal, and
• Ruth Maria Kelly, a former banking executive, former member of Parliament and former secretary of education in Great Britain.

In addition, he has appointed four women as councillors to the Synod of Bishops, which prepares major meetings.

Francis has also named the eight cardinals on the Council.

He has renewed German Cardinal Reinhard Marx's mandate as "cardinal coordinator" and that of South African Cardinal Wilfrid Napier.

The new cardinals and bishops named to the Council are: Cardinals Peter Erdo of Esztergom-Budapest, Hungary; Odilo Pedro Scherer of Sao Paulo; Gerald Lacroix of Quebec; Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, New Jersey; Anders Arborelius of Stockholm; and Archbishop Giuseppe Petrocchi of L'Aquila, Italy.

The Council is "responsible for supervising the administrative and financial structures and activities of the dicasteries of the Roman Curia, of the institutions connected to or referring to the Holy See and of the administrations" falling under the governorate of Vatican City State.

Source

• Reuters
• UCA News
• The Wall Street Journal
• Image: The Straits Times