Pope Francis Backs Cardinal George Pell’s Vatican Shake-up

Perth Now
May 3, 2014

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/world/pope-francis-backs-cardinal-george-pells-vatican-shakeup/story-fnhrvhol-1226904574260

Shake-up ... Cardinal George Pell is overhauling the Vatican’s administration. Source: Supplied

POPE Francis is publicly backing his new economy tsar, who is overhauling the Vatican’s administration amid grumblings from some Holy See bureaucrats about a perceived abrasive and secretive style.

Cardinal Pell, who in one of his last acts as the archbishop of Sydney appeared before a royal commission into child sex abuse in Australia, took over as head of the Vatican’s finances in Rome in March.

Pope Francis on Friday acknowledged Cardinal George Pell’s “tenacity” in calling the imposing Australian the Vatican’s resident “rugby player”.

The pope echoed Pell’s call for a new way of doing business at the Vatican in urging Holy See employees to embrace a “new mentality of evangelical service.”

“The path will not be easy and requires courage and determination,” he told members of Pell’s economy council, made up of cardinals and lay experts.

Cardinal Pell has only been in office for a month but he has already ruffled feathers inside the Italian bureaucracy that has run the Vatican for centuries.

Allies ... Cardinal George Pell meets with Pope Francis during the Pope's Audience with Cardinals on March 15. Source: Supplied

A week after arriving in Rome, Cardinal Pell pushed through a press statement saying Pope Francis had signed off on a new proposal he presented for the troubled Vatican bank that was approved by two study groups when no such agreement had been reached. The bank’s cardinal overseers later issued their own statement asserting their role in running the bank.

Pope Francis was elected pope on a mandate to reform the antiquated Vatican bureaucracy, or Curia, and make it more responsive to the needs of the 21st-century Catholic Church. He created Cardinal Pell’s new Secretariat of the Economy in February in the biggest Vatican reform in a quarter-century.

The announcement, issued days after Cardinal Pell and other members of Francis’ “Group of Eight” cardinal advisers met, took many Vatican officials by surprise.