Anticipating a reforming Pope’s radical plan to curtail the Roman Curia

Pope Francis blueprint for Church reform and renewal is found in his most important document to date — the apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium.

Nov 17, 2018

By Robert Mickens
Pope Francis blueprint for Church reform and renewal is found in his most important document to date — the apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium.

In it he writes: “It is not advisable for the pope to take the place of local bishops in the discernment of every issue which arises in their territory. In this sense, I am conscious of the need to promote a sound ‘decentralisation.’” (EG #16)

“Excessive centralisation, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church’s life and her missionary outreach,” he said.

The offices of the Roman Curia have been the vehicle through which the popes have historically maintained their centralised control over the teaching, worship and many other spheres of the Church’s life and practice throughout the world.

These offices have often acted as an extension of the pope as if they were co-sharers of his authority. Their heads (almost always cardinals) have assumed a special rung on the Church’s hierarchical ladder between the rest of the world’s bishops and the Bishop of Rome.

Francis has already begun to correct this by taking away the teaching and governing authority of a number of Vatican offices (especially the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) by placing a virtual moratorium on their publication of normative documents.

There have been only a trickle of them in this pontificate compared to the tidal-wave of Vatican instructions, notifications and guidelines with which Roman Curia offices flooded the Church, especially under John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

We can expect the new apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium (Preach the Gospel) will make both juridical and structural changes to the curia to ensure that it exists only to serve the pope and the local bishops and has no authority to control or mediate between them. --LCI (international.la-croix.com)