VATICAN CITY
Ottawa Citizen
Pope faces tough decisions as Vatican reforms loom; style and record suggest he’ll go it alone
By Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press
April 13, 2013
VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis has spent much of his first month as pope charming ordinary Catholics with his ordinary yet extraordinary papal ways and making clear he is very much the boss when it comes to decisions as small as the shoes he wears to where he rests his head at night.
In the coming months, he’ll face decisions of far greater import as he responds to demands from cardinals in far-flung dioceses and Vatican officials at home for an overhaul of the Holy See bureaucracy, the dysfunctional family business he inherited one month ago Saturday.
Given Francis’ governing style and track record, it’s likely he’ll make these choices with an eye to efficiency, and very much alone.
Prelates are demanding term limits on Vatican jobs to prevent priests from becoming career bureaucrats. They want consolidated financial reports to remove the cloak of secrecy from the Vatican’s murky finances. And they want regular Cabinet meetings where department heads actually talk to one another to make the Vatican a help to the church’s evangelizing mission, not a hindrance.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.