Pope Francis speaks in St. Peter’s Square Oct. 15, 2022. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Rome Newsroom, Nov 22, 2022 / 12:30 pm (CNA).
Why did Pope Francis dismiss the entire leadership of the Church’s worldwide charity arm Tuesday?
What role will Pier Francesco Pinelli play as temporary administrator of Caritas Internationalis, appointed by papal decree on Nov. 22?
A key date to understanding the move and how it aligns with the pope’s broader reforms is Oct. 15, 2022.
On that day, Pope Francis received in audience at the Vatican Father Giacomo Canobbio and delegates of Bain Capital. The financial investment firm is where Pinelli previously worked. And Canobbio is the priest who, without announcement, was appointed by Pope Francis to the role of commissioner of the Pontifical Lateran University.
Both appointments are typical for the pontiff and his preferred modus operandi: Pope Francis sends an inspection or appoints a commissioner whenever he wants to reform something.
The papacy of commissioners
There were no apparent reasons for appointing a commissioner to Caritas Internationalis — just as there were no apparent reasons for appointing a commissioner at the Pontifical Lateran University.
However, Pope Francis has previously ordered a number of inspections.
Bishop Claudio Maniago was made the inspector of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, after which the pope appointed Archbishop Arthur Roche as prefect of the dicastery. Next, Bishop Egidio Miragoli inspected the Congregation of the Clergy, which was still in progress when the pope appointed the Korean bishop Lazzaro You Heung-sik — later created cardinal— as prefect of the dicastery.
At the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis appointed several commissions.
One such body was the commission of reference on the administrative-economic structures of the Holy See, known by its Italian acronym COSEA. Another was CRIOR, the commission for studying the Institute of Works of Religion reform, commonly known as the Vatican Bank.
Their work, once completed, resulted in the extensive overhaul of the Vatican’s financial departments and the new Institute of Works of Religion statutes, promulgated in 2019.
However, the appointment of a commissioner in Caritas Internationalis has another clear precedent: the inspection of the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development.
The inspection took place in July 2021 and was led by Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago. The team also included Sister Helen Alford, vice-rector of the Pontifical Angelicum University, an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences; and Pinelli, the new administrator of Caritas Internationalis.
Pinelli’s profile
A trained engineer and experienced manager, Pinelli has worked with several institutions as well as a consultant for management and investment firms.
According to Vatican rumors not officially confirmed but provided to CNA from multiple sources, Pinelli was also involved in restructuring what is now the Dicastery for Integral Human Development.
A press release from the dicastery said Pinelli was an engineer “with a more humanist than technical way of proceeding” and that he was “formed in Ignatian spirituality,” a man who “from an early age was active as a volunteer working with recovering drugs addicts, in development cooperation, support for missionary works, and catechesis.” The statement also noted that he is married with three children and three grandchildren.
The release also emphasized that “in 33 years of work,” Pinelli had gained managerial experience in different sectors, including a large energy company.
Having worked both as a project manager for energy companies and as a management consultant for Bain, Pinelli also has experience working with religious and secular works and institutions, according to the release.
Obviously, his formation and positions in some Jesuit institutions may have played a role. It seems likely that Cardinal Michael Czerny, SJ, the current prefect of the dicastery, had a word in involving him and others.
However, it is still hard to assess which issues are at stake. It seems clear that the pope wants to reform Caritas Internationalis, including its statutes and bylaws.
Founded in 1951, the Catholic confederation is made up of 162 charitable organizations based in 200 countries around the world. Its headquarters are located on Vatican territory in Rome, and the Vatican oversees its activity.
According to Czerny’s dicastery, “no evidence emerged of financial mismanagement or sexual impropriety”; however, “deficiencies were noted in management and procedures, seriously prejudicing team spirit and staff morale.”
Pinelli’s task
The reform of the statutes will be the first task of the new commissioner.
Pinelli will be assisted by Maria Amparo Alonso Escobar, Caritas Internationalis’ head of advocacy, and by Jesuit Father Manuel Morujão, who will provide personal and spiritual accompaniment to Caritas employees, according to Pope Francis’ decree.
In May 2023, the next Caritas Internationalis general assembly is expected to be held in Rome, with the appointment of the new president, general secretary, and treasurer. By then, the reform process will likely be completed.
Caritas Internationalis will undergo a review “in order to improve its management norms and procedures — even while financial matters have been well-handled and fundraising goals regularly achieved — and so better to serve its member charitable organizations around the world.”
However, a reform of the statutes already took place in 2019 and was approved by the pope with a rescript of Jan. 13, 2020.
As for the change of the statutes of Caritas Internationalis, it was simply a matter of passing the competencies from the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, which no longer exists, to the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, which has absorbed its functions.
As for the rules of procedure, these changes were not communicated. But they generally accepted some of the requests approved by the Caritas General Assembly, which envisaged encouraging the presence of women within the highest representative bodies and including two young people in the same representative bodies.
In particular, there was talk of the Representative Council of the federation, abbreviated with the name RE.CO., the acronym for Representative Council. These indications have now been implemented and will become operational.
The structure of Caritas Internationalis was thus “adjusted” and adapted to the reform of the Curia.
However, the statutes of Caritas Internationalis remained confirmed in the structure as Pope Benedict XVI reformed them in 2012. Those statutes strengthened the collaboration between Caritas Internationalis and the Holy See and clearly outlined the competencies of the Vatican Secretariat of State.
Not only that: the new structure of Caritas Internationalis gave greater coordination to departments and bodies connected to the Holy See, which also concerned doctrinal aspects.
The rationale behind Benedict XVI’s reform
It is noteworthy that the 2012 reform was part of a more extensive project by Benedict XVI to accomplish Pastor Bonus’s provisions fully.
Pastor Bonus was the apostolic constitution that regulated the functions and tasks of the Curia offices, and Praedicate Evangelium now replaces that.
However, the reform came after a governance crisis. In 2011, the Secretariat of State did not approve the renomination of the former secretary general, Lesley-Anne Knight. (However, her work was praised by the president of Caritas Internationalis at the time, Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodriguez Maradiaga.) As a result, she was replaced by Michel Roy, a Frenchman who worked with Secours Catholique — the Caritas in France.
Knight’s non-confirmation also stemmed from the new approach given with the subsequent reform of Caritas Internationalis.
It was an approach that derived from the formulation of Benedict XVI’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate. In the encyclical, Benedict XVI stressed that human development and foreign aid could not be separated from the demand for truth. The encyclical also pointed to the fact that many international organizations were promoting abortion, contraception, sterilization, and euthanasia.
This was an approach that Knight did not fully share, as she publicly explained to the media at the time.
While some approved of Knight’s departure, others were disappointed. Despite a robust generational change in Caritas Internationalis in recent years, these divisive feelings may have lingered in the background and fueled some complaints about “management and procedures.”
What will the new reform look like?
The tone of the dicastery’s press release suggests that the reform will be more managerial. But, above all, it is a substantial change in philosophy from the reform of Benedict XVI.
In short, it could be another paradigm shift by Pope Francis, comparable to some degree to his restrictions of the Traditional Latin Mass.
From this point of view, Pope Francis has identified several people to help complete his changes to the Church’s structure.
In carrying out the reform, the pope does not hesitate to demote someone like Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, current president of Caritas, who now finds himself mandated to “liaise” with Pinelli and his staff for the upcoming general assembly.
Tagle was rumored to be appointed the next prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops. Even if these rumors were to be confirmed, Tagle’s public image has now been compromised by the Caritas decision. This will also weigh in a future conclave.
Pope Francis, however, is completing his goals. As he said in one of his homilies in the days of the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 — and also in a meeting with the Candia Foundation in April — he remains critical of humanitarian organizations that do good work but spend 60% of their budget on wages. The pope called on them to keep costs to a minimum, “so that most of the money goes to the people.”
[…]
It suggests mixed kinds of revisionism. Also the only ones I know who ever saw the Church as monolithic are those denying Christian doctrine.
The Holy Father holds forth “authority from Acts” for “synodality”. It would seem to be a kind of new elevation of status for the aged practice.
I also see over-/under-tones of Modernism. Modernism as it understands itself, an ACTIVITY work-in-progress, mingles sources, ideas, times, to make sense.
Stress is placed on the popular piety as the meaning of the Mass. He says he looks forward to this specifically. Presumably it can’t be ideology?
Likely another newsroom error (this: “tradition is the living memory of believers,” while “traditionalism instead is the dead life of our believers.”). The maxim is “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.”
And, second, might the case be made, that synods (like councils) are what the Church DOES, not what the Church IS? (“the Church is either synodal or it is not Church.”) As if essence precedes existence (with Aquinas), rather than Sartre’s “existence precedes essence”? What comes first, finally, to be or to do? DO-BE-DO-BE-DO-BE-DO!
It seems to me that the mangling of what Peter Beaulieu refers to as the maxim was intentional. “The living memory of the believers” seems apropo of this Pope: he and his most fervent disciples are just waiting for those of us brought up in the Latin Rite and who remember it with great affection to die. Then they may do as they wish, since it is not only the memory of that rite that will be gone, but also the memory of a Church that was universally united by common ritual and belief.
Then I see a problem if that’s his expectation, since the majority of those who attend the EF of the Mass in my experience areat most 30 years of age. That seems to baffle and infuriate Francis in a particular way.
I’ve been a critic of Radical Traditionalism(i.e. Sedes, SSPX, SSPV, Feeneyites, NeoGeocentrists, Jewish Conspiracy Yobs, morons who believe the St Pius V Liturgy is the only true liturgy et) for decades.
But that being said I am a fan of loyal Traditionists(FSSP, Ed Feser etc) and Traditional Thomism.
The problem with the Holy Father here is he just isn’t very good at opposing the lunatic fringe of Traditionalism. He is just going to feed it. He paints every Trad with a broad brush and he ignores the principle of diversity and unity in diversity.
Go back to the pre John Paul II policies of the 70’s which failed horribly is not helpful.
Why should not love of the Old St Pius V Rite be part of that diversity?
I am all for it.
Pope Benedict’s policy solved the problem. We had to give it time. Francis is the one going backwards here. Ah well. I’ll pray for him and take comfort in the fact He won’t be Pope forever…
It only seems like forever, Jim.
I just wish the guy would listen to himself. He’s the one generating all the conflict.
Sorry to disappoint you but there is no such thing as Feeneyism.
After Fr. Leonard Feeny, SJ, for his extreme views on salvation outside of the Church, excommunicated by Richard Cardianl Cushing, ca. 1949-50.
In my experience, as I’ve noed here ar CWR and elsewhere, there’s little difference between the vitriolic hostility of many clergy of the Pope’s generation toward the old EF Latin rite and that I’ve encouintered when requesting that the OF be celebrated in Latin. And it’s not only to Latin: I’ve also often been brusquely dismissed for requesting that the Roman Canon in its present English version be used. That’s in ENGLISH, once again. It doesn’t seem to take much in some clerical quarters or with some older laity to get tagged as a “RadTrad.”
It’s a lively church community in motion. Acts of the Apostles – contain rich food for thought, prayer, and action.
Men In Black movies have their scripting loaded with pithy-type exchanges that serve the purpose of telling the meaning of story and driving the drama. In this trilogy it also puns the drama. How that works is a feature of theatre in that the audience wants to be entertained and the dramatist has to make up a credibility-world within the presentation, proper to it. It does not mean it is NOT a fiction because it propels an experience. Understanding it saves you from the existentialism that is rampant in the fiction industry. And while the pithy offerings and allocutions in there might sometimes ring true, there is the reality that often what they are sounding out is the doom, banality and fate the story wants to represent, even dogmatize. Take for instance, Griffin in Men In Black III:
“Where there is death there will always be death.”
The different types of problems have to be addressed according to their nature, intensity, patterning, nuancing, complexity. Shuttering “extreme traditionalists” and being freely permissive with “humble progressives” would show as forms of “disciplining” intervention on the one hand and “guidance” on the other; but I am left wondering at it when I see the practical limitations it imposes and then also the actual results.
In terms of limitations, each situation needs its own set of attentions and types of justice. This “binary” settlement cuts off growth and improvement.
In terms of result, I cite 2 examples that indicate arbitrary disruption -:
a) The Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate had (have?) promise for piety and mission but got truncated.
b) Argentina seminary was closed because a few (maybe many?) were too rigid, but none is identified.
Curious that the TLM communities which without exception do their best to celebrate the Mass carefully according to the Rubrics in the missal and they do their best to teach the Catholic Faith according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church are the ones accused by the pope of being “Traditionalists.” If doing this is reckoned by the Pope himself to be unacceptable and out of step with whatever it is that he thinks is the right expression of the faith of the church then…. God help the Roman Church.
“A backward-looking intoxication with the old”???? Really?? I look around my church and all I see are people who appear to be 70 years plus.What happens to the church when they finally pass on?? Yet I understand MANY young people love the Latin Traditional Mass. Is the Pope’s problem that people are actually ATTENDING traditional Latin MASS???? Maybe, under the current scandalous circumstances, he should be thanking God that ANYONE is attending Mass, no matter which version.
When there is conflict in theology the liturgy is always mistreated.
The post conciliar movers and shakers set out to deconstruct «tradition»; polyester, synthetised, rolling Catholicism is the legacy.
No room for the transcendent or the numinous at Hotel Neo-Catholicism.
What, pray, is the «theology of synodality»?
What, pray, is the «theology of synodality»?
Mighty prelate (as usual) speaks with forked tongue.