Pope Francis, what will there be to be rebuilt

With the announced appointment of Sister Raffaella Petrini as governor of the Vatican City State starting in March, Pope Francis has made his primary intent clear. Faced with an attitude he summarily describes as: “It has always been done this way,” Pope Francis rather applies a personal approach, from which flow changes to both law and custom.

Pope Francis precisely outlined the principle at the outset of his pontificate.

The then-Ssecretary of the Congregation for Religious, José Rodríguez Carballo OFM – former Minister General of the Friars Minor and now Archbishop of Mérida-Badajoz in Spain – said during a meeting at the Pontifical University Antonianum in 2013 that he was discussing with the Pope about the need to broaden criteria for novitiates.

He explained that at a certain point, he had pointed out that some ideas might not be foreseen in canon law, to which Pope Francis responded: “We can change canon law.”

Added to this is another principle of the Pope: reforms are made on the go. There is no need for a precise plan because the plan is simply to reform. This is why Pope Francis’s reforms tend to go one step forward and one step back, with subsequent adjustments following errors or malfunctions.

So, how does the announced appointment of Sister Raffaella Petrini fit into this logic?

There is a prior question: Why did Pope Francis decide to appoint a nun to a post that is a cardinal’s billet?

The presidency of the Vatican City State administration is not the exclusive prerogative of ecclesiastics. It is an administrative post. and it is worth remembering that the governor of the state was always a layperson in the past. John Paul II linked the power of the Pope and its exercise over the Vatican City State to a commission of cardinals. The president of the Commission of Cardinals, who must be a cardinal, is also President of the Governorate of the Vatican City State. And so, the power of the Pope is exercised by a commission of cardinals whose president also performs administrative functions.

Pope Francis does not seem to have considered all this.

He thought of Sister Petrini’s value, the fact that the position could, at least in theory, not be filled by an ordained minister, and the fact that, in this way, he could fulfill his promise to increase the number of women in government positions in the Church.

This move certainly requires a change in the laws. Either the governor’s role is separated from that of the president of the Commission of Cardinals, or the Commission of Cardinals becomes simply a commission to which anyone can be appointed.

More than a reform, it is a revolution. At least because, especially after the Second Vatican Council, there has always been an attempt to connect the ministry of government to ordination. John XXIII established that cardinals should be at least archbishops, with some exceptions. Canon law established that clerics could only be judged by clerics. The reform of the Curia by Paul VI and then by John Paul II always provided for at least one archbishop to lead the Vatican departments because this had to exercise collegiality with the Pope, Bishop of Rome.

Pope Francis has returned to the idea that the Pope’s personal investiture is enough to have a canonical mission. The Pope is at the center of everything, while what concerns the government can be entrusted to anyone. Ordination concerns only spiritual matters, while ordination is not crucial when it comes to governing. The potestas gubernandi, or the power of government, thus becomes a mere job function, not part of a sacrament.

The Pope, however, has not returned to this idea with a precise and systematic theological reflection. He has arrived at it through trial and error, through government choices that have more of a need to shift balances than a desire to carry forward a vision. There is a vision, but it is in effect if not intention an almost secular vision of government.

The one thing on which everyone agreed in 2013 was that many things in the Roman Curia and in the Church in general needed reform. How reforms are carried out, however, is not a matter of indifference. A reformer’s choices—any reformer’s choices—impact the life of the Church.

One might then ask how necessary all this was.

When Pope Francis was elected, it was said that four years of Bergoglio should suffice. This rumor—reported by journalists close to the Pope and certainly not by enemies—testified to the need to break the balance and, at the same time, return to a point to rebuild according to the old balance. Bergoglio was considered the healthy shock that would have subsequently allowed more organic growth.

After eleven years of pontificate, there is a need to rebuild. Much of the old world has been destroyed, but the new world has not only not been built, but the foundations of this new world have not even been laid. Pope Francis’s reforms appear incomplete because they did not claim to be complete.

There is an asymmetric government, with episcopal offices and cardinals assigned based on personal trust but who have no actual weight in the offices. And there is a centralization of everything in the figure of the Pope. In addition, there is a powerful will to outline a new narrative. In recent years, there has been much talk of the need for Latin American theology to become a source of theology, the desire to put popular movements back at the center, and the fact that one can see the center better from the periphery.

A new narrative must be created to make this shift, and a new point of view must be imposed. It remains to be seen which direction the following four documents of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith will take (artificial intelligence, slavery, monogamy, and Mariology). Indeed, the fact that the Dicastery publishes so much indicates an unprecedented effort. Previously, the Dicastery was considered—sometimes fearfully—as the placewhere errors were corrected. Now, it risks becoming where new points of view are imposed.

In the end, Pope Francis has caused many things to go backward. For all his talk of going forward, Francis has in many ways have returned us to older notions, as if to reset history and start again from an earlier point, if not from scratch, as though history had never happened.

The work thus cut out and begun cannot remain merely cosmetic. At some point, someone will touch the foundation.