Higher Calling

Boston Herald
April 14, 2013

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/04/higher_calling

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley could emerge as a key player in the Vatican as he assumes a potentially game-changing role on a new committee charged with advising Pope Francis on worldwide Catholic church reforms.

“Potentially this is an earthquake rather than a tremor,” said John L. Allen Jr. of National Catholic Reporter.

“This has the making of the biggest real-world decentralization of the church since the Second Vatican Council,” 
Allen said.

O’Malley was appointed to the elite new eight-cardinal Vatican Advisory Council yesterday.

His appointment to the reform panel indicates the humble pope’s admiration for the Boston archbishop’s similar lifestyle and theology, as well as O’Malley’s ability to weather tough ecclesiastical controversies of his own, 
experts said.

“The fact is that Cardinal O’Malley has gone into three separate dioceses with serious administrative problems and cleaned them up,” said the Rev. James Weiss, an Episcopalian and Vatican expert.

“Cardinal O’Malley has the kind of style I think the pope is trying to highlight,” Boston College Vatican expert the Rev. James Bretzke.

“And Cardinal O’Malley is a cardinal who brings street creds in dealing with sexual abuse.”

The leader of the Boston archdiocese will join cardinals from countries including Chile, India, Australia and the Congo.

He will remain based in Boston, said his spokesman, Terrence Donilon.

The Vatican said the idea for the advisory group came from discussions that took place during pre-conclave meetings, and its first meeting will be in the beginning of October.

The new pope clearly is 
maneuvering to leapfrog traditional Vatican insiders by having the eight cardinals report directly to him,

“The complaints have 
always been that there’s too much power in Rome and too little in the churches around the world,” Allen said.

“But now you have eight heavy-hitters from around the world who are not sitting in the Vatican,” Allen said.

A shakeup of power in Rome was a central theme in talk among the cardinals who elected Francis pope, experts said.

But, Bretzke noted, other Vatican reforms have failed in the past.

“He’s clearly making this 
a bureaucratic institution, 
because it’s a standing committee,” Bretzke said. “But it is an experiment. It could work out. Is it certain it will work? Absolutely not.”

O’Malley was on a retreat in Israel and unavailable yesterday.