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First lay head of disciplinary commission at Roman Curia appointed

January 8, 2021 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Jan 8, 2021 / 04:40 pm (CNA).- For the first time, the Disciplinary Commission of the Roman Curia will be presided by a layperson after Pope Francis appointed professor Vincenzo Buonomo, rector of the Pontifical Lateran University. And it is possible that more laypersons will be appointed for other Vatican positions.

The Commission is composed of a president and six members. Established by St. John Paul II in 1981, the Commission rules whether an administrative sanction – i.e., suspension or firing – can be imposed on a Roman Curia official is pertinent or not.

Pope Francis also appointed two new members of the Commission: Monsignor Alejandro W. Bunge, president of the Labor Office of the Apostolic See, known by the Italian acronym ULSA; and Mr. Maximino Caballero Ledo, General Secretary of the Secretariat for the Economy.

The appointment of professor Buonomo, a layperson, as a president is unprecedented. According to the Commission’s Statutes, issued in 2016, the president of the Commission must be a cardinal or at least a bishop. The statutes have a five-year validity. Until now, the Commission had five presidents: three cardinals, an archbishop, and a bishop. The last president was Bishop Giorgio Corbellini, who was also president of the ULSA. Corbellini died in November 2019, leaving the position open.

Article 4 of the Statutes read that “the Commission is composed by a Cardinal or Bishop president and other six members, both laymen and clergy, appointed for a five-year term by the Pontiff.”

Article 4 also states that the Vatican Secretariat of State’s adviser and the secretary of the administrative section of the Secretariat for the Economy are members de iure (officially sanctioned) of the same Commission. That means that also Monsignor Luigi Cona, is a member of the Commission.

The other Commission members are Bishop Juan Arrieta, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, and Flaminia Giovannelli, undersecretary emeritus of the Dicastery for the Service to the Integral Human Development. Vincenzo Buonomo was also a member before being elevated to the chairmanship of the Commission. Pope Francis may now appoint another member of the Commission.

Buonomo has garnered growing attention during the years. Pope Francis called him in 2018 to be the first lay rector of the Pontifical Lateran University. Since he became the rector, Pope Francis has paid a visit to the university twice.

Since 2014, Buonomo is also a counselor of the Vatican City State Administration and was part of the committee that drafted the first Vatican law on procurements, issued in July 2020.

A professor in the Pontifical Lateran University since 1984, Buonomo began his collaboration with the Vatican Secretariat of State during the 1980s.

Since 2007, Buonomo is office chief of the Vatican’s delegation to the U.N. Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO,) where he has served since 1993.

In 2015, he was a member of the Secretariat of State’s working group for the drafting of the Holy See Periodic Reports to the U.N. Committees on the Rights of Children, on Racial discrimination, and Against Torture.

The appointment of Buonomo as president of the Commission is certainly a sign of trust by Pope Francis. Pope Francis is also continuing his policy of appointing laypeople as Curia top-officials.

In the last year, Pope Francis appointed Maximino Caballero Ledo as general secretary of the Secretariat for the Economy and Fabio Gasperini as general secretary of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA, a sort of Vatican central bank). In 2018, Pope Francis appointed another layperson, Paolo Ruffini, as prefect of the Dicastery of Communication.

There are rumors that Pope Francis might also choose a layperson as general secretary of the Vatican City State Administration. The current general secretary, Bishop Fernando Vergez Alzaga, already turned 75, the official retirement age.


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After Secretariat of State shakeup, what’s next for Curia reform?

January 7, 2021 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Jan 7, 2021 / 03:33 pm (CNA).- The draft of the delayed document that will reform of the Roman Curia gives the Vatican’s Secretariat of State a more prominent place in the workings of the Church’s central governing bureaucracy. But during the year 2020, Pope Francis moved in the opposite direction.

In fact, within the span of a few months, the Secretariat of State has been gradually divested of all of its financial power.

In September, the Pope appointed the new commission of cardinals of the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) – the also called “Vatican bank.” For the first time, the Secretary of State was not among the cardinal members. Nor is the Secretariat of State represented in the Commission on Reserved Matters that the Pope established in October via the first Vatican procurement law. In November, the Pope decided that the Secretariat of State should transfer all its funds to APSA, the equivalent of a Vatican central bank.

In December, Pope Francis spelled out how the handover should occur, clarifying that the Secretariat of State will be under the constant oversight of the Vatican’s leading financial operations watchdog, the Secretariat for the Economy, which has been renamed the “Papal Secretariat for Economic Affairs.”

These moves are in direct contrast with the Roman Curia’s draft constitution, Praedicate Evangelium, which continues to be revised by the Council of Cardinals.

Indeed, the document’s draft proposes the establishment of a real “papal secretariat” within the Vatican Secretariat of State, which would take the place of Pope Francis’s private Secretariat and coordinate the various bodies of the Roman Curia. The papal secretariat would, for example, summon the periodic interdicasterial meetings and even bring dicasteries together to work on specific tasks or projects when needed.

If Praedicate Evangelium remains essentially as it appears to be in the draft version that circulated last summer, then the piecemeal reforms that Pope Francis has introduced will make the new regulations old and outdated as soon as they are promulgated.

If, on the other hand, the draft is being heavily amended to match to what Pope Francis has been doing, then Praedicate Evangelium will not see the daylight any time soon. Instead, it will continue to be under examination for an even longer time, putting the Church in a state of “reform as you go.”

In other words, rather than setting reforms in stone with a binding document like Praedicate Evangelium, as previous popes have done, reforms will come via Pope Francis’ personal decisions, which several times have overturned his previous ones.

That is why the path of Curial reform has been characterized, until now, by many as back-and-forth.

First, it was the Secretariat for the Economy seeing its powers shrinking.

Initially, Pope Francis understood Cardinal George Pell’s reformist ideas and supported a significant recasting of financial control mechanisms. The first phase began with establishing the Secretariat for the Economy in 2014.

But by 2016, Pope Francis embraced the cause of the Secretariat of State, which argued that Cardinal Pell’s approach to financial reform did not take into consideration the Holy See’s particular nature as a State, not a corporation. The opposite views escalated into a fight when the Secretariat for the Economy signed a contract for a massive audit with Pricewaterhouse Coopers. The auditing contract was signed in December 2015 and scaled down by the Holy See in June 2016.

After reducing the scope of Cardinal Pell’s audit, the Secretariat of State regained its central role in the Roman Curia, while the Secretariat for the Economy was weakened. When Cardinal Pell had to take a leave of absence in 2017 to go back to Australia and face infamous allegations, of which he was later acquitted, the Secretariat for the Economy’s work got stalled.

Pope Francis appointed Fr. Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves to replace Cardinal Pell in November 2019. Under Fr. Guerrero, the Secretariat for the Economy regained power and influence. Simultaneously, the Secretariat of State got caught in the scandal that followed by the purchase of a luxury real estate in London.

With the decision to take any financial control from the Secretariat of State, the pope returned to his original vision of a strong Secretariat for the Economy. The Secretariat of State has lost any sense of autonomy since its financial operations are now transferred to APSA. Now, every financial move by the Secretariat of State falls directly under the Secretariat for the Economic oversight.

The transfer of funds to APSA seems to recall Cardinal Pell’s project for Vatican Asset Management. APSA, as the Vatican Central Bank, has been become the central office for Vatican investments.

So far, after the latest papal moves, the Secretariat of State is the only Vatican department with a former financial autonomy that has lost it. Pope Francis’ decision has not yet involved the Congregation for the Evangelization of People –which handles, among others, the massive funds of the World Mission Sunday- and the Vatican City State Administration, which also have financial autonomy.

But many Vatican observers agree that no dicastery can now consider itself safe from Pope Francis’ on-the-go reform, since the pope already proved himself ready to change direction unexpectedly, and to do it very quickly. In the Vatican, there is already talk of  “a permanent state of reform,” rather that the definitive one that should have come with Praedicate Evangelium.

In the meantime, the dicasteries’ activities are at a standstill, while Curia members wonders if the Curia reform document will ever be out. The Secretariat of State is the first victim of this situation. But most likely it won’t be the last.

 


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