Pope Francis Begins His Reform Effort

We now have an idea why Pope Francis did not attend a concert where he was to have been the guest of honor last Saturday evening. The gala classical concert was scheduled before his election in March. But the white papal armchair reserved for the Pope was conspicuously empty. Just before the concert, an archbishop told the crowd of cardinals and Italian dignitaries that an "urgent commitment that cannot be postponed" would prevent Francis from attending. The immediate reaction in the Vatican and Rome was that Francis was sending a stark signal that he is going to do things his way and does not like the Vatican social pomp and circumstance. The picture of the empty chair was used in many Italian papers on Monday. The Corriere della Sera newspaper called his decision "a show of force" to illustrate the simple style he wants Church officials to embrace. Vatican insiders were at first puzzled, but one unnamed source said that the message the Pope wanted to send was that, with the Church in crisis, he - and perhaps they - had too much pastoral work to do to attend social events : "It took us by surprise....We are still in a period of growing pains. He is still learning how to be pope and we are still learning how he wants to do it....In Argentina, they probably knew not to arrange social events like concerts for him because he probably wouldn't go," said the source. The day before the concert, Francis said bishops should be "close to the people" and not have "the mentality of a prince." On Saturday, during the concert, Francis was believed to be working on new appointments for the Curia, the Vatican's troubled senior administration, which has been held responsible for some of the mishaps and scandals that plagued the eight-year reign of Pope Benedict before he resigned in February. Francis inherited a Church struggling to deal with priests' sexual abuse of children, alleged corruption and infighting in the Curia, and conflict over the running of the Vatican's scandal-ridden bank. Benedict left a secret report for Francis on the problems in the administration, which came to light when sensitive documents were stolen from Pope Benedict's desk and leaked by his butler in what became known as the "Vatileaks" scandal. ~~~~~ However, dear readers, it could be that the Vatican cardinals are exaggerating the Pope's message. Perhaps the new Pope, who has such an enormous reform agenda on his desk, was simply concentrating on far more important matters. For example, two days ago Francis named a commission of inquiry to look into the activities of the troubled Vatican Bank in the midst a new money-laundering investigation and continued questions about the secretive institution that have plagued the Institute for Religious Works for decades. Prosecutors from the southern city of Salerno have placed a senior Vatican official under investigation for alleged money-laundering. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, confirmed Wednesday that Monsignor Nunzio Scarano had been suspended temporarily from his position in one of the Vatican's key finance offices, the Administration for the Patrimony of the Apostolic See. Scarano has said he did nothing wrong. The Vatican Bank was created n 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage assets set aside for religious or charitable works. The Vatican Bank also manages the pension system for the Vatican's thousands of employees. On June 15, Pope Francis filled a key vacancy in the bank's governing structure, naming a trusted friend to be his person inside the bank with access to documentation, board meetings and management. Francis has asked the commission to carry out a harmonization of bank activities with the universal mission of the Apostolic See, according to the legal document that created it. He named five people to the commission, including two Americans : Monsignor Peter Wells, a top official in the Vatican secretariat of state, and Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard law professor, former US ambassador to the Holy See and current president of a pontifical academy. US cardinals were among the most vocal in demanding a wholesale reform of the Vatican bureaucracy - and the Vatican Bank - in the meetings running up to the March conclave that elected Francis pope. The demands were raised following revelations in leaked documents last year that told of dysfunction, petty turf wars and allegations of corruption in the Holy See's governance. The commission is already working and its members have the authority to gather documents, data and information about the bank, even surpassing normal secrecy rules. The bank's administration continues to function as normal, as does the Vatican's new financial watchdog agency which has supervisory control over it. ~~~~~ It is indeniable that Francis is attempting to lead by example - trying to live simply and asking cardinals and Vatican Curia members to forget about the trappings of power and preference in order to lead the Church back into the hearts of the people it serves. Since his election on March 13, Francis has not spent a single night in the opulent and spacious papal apartments. He has lived in a small suite in a busy Vatican guest house, where he takes most meals in a communal dining room and says Mass every morning in the house chapel rather than the private chapel in the Apostolic Palace. Whether Pope Francis can succeed to change the centuries-old Vatican culture by sheer force of example will be seen. But he clearly has the Church laity on his side and he is now putting in place the specific change agents he needs if his larger reform vision is to succeed.