VATICAN CITY
Commonweal
Robert Mickens March 4, 2015
Pope Francis has finally issued statutes for the three main offices in charge of overseeing financial reforms at the Vatican. And if you believe reports in much of the English-language media, you’d be convinced that he’s strengthened the hand of Australian Cardinal George Pell, who is prefect of one of those entities, the secretariat for the economy. But you would be wrong. One prominent writer even suggested – astonishingly – that proof of this renewed vote of confidence in Pell was the fact that Francis did not sack him. That was never even a remote possibility. And it’s the flimsiest piece of evidence on which to stake such a claim. In reality, the newly published statutes for the three offices – Pell’s, the fifteen-member Council for the Economy headed by German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, and that of auditor general (still to be named) – actually put significant checks on the former Archbishop of Sydney. It is clear, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that these statutes are not what Cardinal Pell had hoped for. The proof of that is in the simple fact that the new texts were published in Italian with no sight of an English version or translation. This is most peculiar, especially since – according to Francis’s “motu proprio” of February 2014 that established the three offices, Fidelis Dispensatur et Prudens – Pell was the person “responsible for the preparation of the definitive statutes” for all three. He certainly would have prepared them in English, since he’s fought to make that his office’s main working language in the year since he took up his job here in Rome. Obviously, the texts he submitted were modified. By the secretariat of state? By Cardinal Marx and his council? Be assured, these statutes do not confirm George Pell as a so-called Vatican finance “czar” with the broad-sweeping powers that perhaps he and others had envisioned. At best, they represent a compromise between him and his allies that have been advancing that ambition and other Vatican chieftains that demanded it be reined in.
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