Vatican Diary / Confirmed, Promoted, Removed

From Chiesa

Tremors in the congregation for Catholic education, from which Pope Francis has removed nine cardinals. And meanwhile the new secretary of state has chosen his personal secretary, the Englishman Robert D. Murphy, fresh from four years of service in Buenos Aires.

VATICAN CITY, December 1, 2013 – It is well established by now that the reform of the Roman curia undertaken by Pope Francis will be thorough, and precisely for this reason will not be accomplished in the short term. The confirmation has come from the second round of meetings of the eight cardinal “advisors” that took place in Rome in early December, in the presence of the pontiff.

“Our work has just begun,” said one of them, cardinal of Boston Sean P. O’Malley. And the coordinator of the eight, Honduran cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, has also cautioned against haste.

“Looking at history,” Maradiaga observed regarding John Paul II’s 1988 constitution on the curia, “‘Pastor Bonus’ took more than three years. Be patient. Big things cannot be improvised. The Church is facing great problems that concern many people.”

He then added: ” The participation of the world is so great that arriving at a synthesis requires discussion. Arriving at conclusions takes time. And above all – the pope has said this – there are things that take time because the reforms are not superficial but profound, and therefore dialogue, listening, and discernment are needed.”

Nonetheless, in anticipation of a radical reform of the Roman curia Pope Francis has already begun altering the “governance” of the Roman dicasteries as they are currently structured.

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On March 16, in effect, three days after his election, the newly elected pontiff had “expressed the desire that the heads and members of the dicasteries of the Roman curia, and also the secretaries, as well as the president of the pontifical commission of Vatican City-State, should continue, provisorily, in their respective positions ‘donec aliter provideatur.'” The latter formula left his hands free and had not been used by his predecessors in confirming the directors of the curia at the beginning of their respective pontificates.

Now, nine months after the election, in addition to having appointed on August 31 a new secretary of state in the person of Pietro Parolin and having stabilized at the same time the other officials of the secretariat of state (substitute Angelo G. Becciu, assessor Monsignor Peter B. Wells, and “foreign minister” Dominique Mamberti with his deputy Antoine Camilleri), pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio has already confirmed, with a few transfers and mergers, the officials of four out of nine congregations: doctrine of the faith, Propaganda Fide, and clergy on September 21, Catholic education on November 30. As well as those of two out of eleven pontifical councils: laity and justice and peace on September 24.

Apart from the appointment of a new major penitentiary in the person of Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, transferred there from the more important congregation for the clergy, other officials in the curia will therefore remain in office only “donec aliter provideatur,” meaning provisorily.

This is the case of the officials of the apostolic signatura (where however an adjunct secretary has been appointed, Bishop Giuseppe Sciacca, moved from the general secretariat of the governorate), of the APSA, of the prefecture of economic affairs, of the governorate (where however there is a new secretary general, the Argentine Legionary of Christ Fernando Vérgez Alzaga) and of five congregations: Eastern Churches, divine worship, causes of saints, bishops, religious. In these latter two dicasteries new secretaries have been chosen, respectively the Brazilian Ilson de Jesus Montanari and the Spanish Franciscan José Rodriguez Carballo.

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Among the full confirmations the most interesting is certainly the one at the congregation for Catholic education, and not only because in the recent past – as documented in a recent book by Elisabetta Piqué, “Francesco. Vita e rivoluzione,” published in Italy by Lindau – then-cardinal Bergoglio had some difficulty in getting the dicastery to accept his choice as the new rector of the Catholic University of Buenos Aires, Monsignor Victor Manuel Fernández (who as pope he significantly elevated to the episcopal dignity just two months after being elected bishop of Rome).

While in the case of the congregations for the doctrine of the faith and of Propaganda Fide the pope has in fact confirmed the members of the dicasteries en bloc, and in the congregation for the clergy has instead confirmed no one, in the congregation for Catholic education the pope has dug deep: with confirmations, with the addition of new members, with removals.

Francis has confirmed as prefect of the congregation for education the Polish cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, 74 (he will reach retirement age in October of 2014), in office since 1999, and as secretary of the same dicastery the Italian archbishop Angelo Vincenzo Zani, 63, in office since November of 2012, when he replaced the French Dominican Jean-Louis Brugués, now the archivist and librarian of Holy Roman Church and in this capacity on the waiting list for the cardinal’s scarlet at the consistory already scheduled for next February.

Moreover, the pope has appointed eleven new members of the congregation and has confirmed another 23.

Seven of the new members are cardinals: Béchara Boutros Raï of Lebanon, patriarch of the Maronites; Odilo P. Scherer of São Paulo, Brazil; John Njue of Nairobi, Kenya; Timothy M. Dolan of New York; John Tong Hon of Hong Kong; Luis A. G. Tagle of Manila; Kurt Koch of Switzerland, president of the pontifical council for Christian unity.

And four are archbishops: Beniamino Stella of Italy, prefect of the congregation for the clergy; Jorge Carlos Patrón Wong of Mexico, the new secretary for seminaries of the same congregation; Ricardo Ezzati Andrello of Santiago, Chile; Marek Jedraszewski of Lódz, Poland.

Twenty of the confirmed are cardinals: Antonio M. Rouco Varela of Madrid; Christoph Schönborn of Vienna; Audrys J. Backis, emeritus of Vilnius, Lithuania; Óscar A. Rodríguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras; José da Cruz Policarpo, emeritus of Lisbon; Peter K. A. Turkson of Ghana (curia); Josip Bozanic of Zagabria, Croatia; Péter Erdo of Budapest; Marc Ouellet of Canada (curia); Jean-Pierre Ricard of Bordeaux, France; Oswald Gracias of Mumbai, Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya di Kinshasa, Zaire; Reinhard Marx of Munich; Thomas C. Collins of Toronto; Willem J. Eijk of Utrecht, Netherlands; Leonardo Sandri of Argentina (curia); Gianfranco Ravasi and Fernando Filoni of Italy (curia); João Braz de Aviz of Brazil (curia), Edwin F. O’Brien of the United States (curia).

Plus two archbishops: Alfredo H. Zecca of Tucuman, Argentina and Gerhard L. Müller of Germany, both in the curia. And the Swiss bishop Charles Morerod, of Lausanne.

But the more curious list is that of the removals. In addition to cardinals Godfried Danneels, Juan Sandoval Iñiguez, and Raffaele Farina, who have already reached the age of 80, Dionigi Tettamanzi, who will turn 80 next March, is no longer a member of the congregation.

Also not confirmed are cardinals William J. Levada and Mauro Piacenza, replaced by their respective successors at the congregations for the doctrine of the faith and for the clergy, Müller and Stella.

But also removed are cardinals Stanislaw Dziwisz of Krakow, Giuseppe Betori of Florence, and Rainer Maria Woelki of Berlin. Curiously, these last two had been in office for only one year, having been appointed members of the congregation after the consistory that saw them created cardinals in February of 2012.

In practice, therefore, the new congregation for Catholic education designed by Bergoglio is less Italian (Tettamanzi, Betori, Farina, and Piacenza are leaving, while only Stella is entering), less European (in addition to the Italians, Danneels, Dziwisz, and Woelki are also leaving, while in addition to Stella only Koch and Jedraszewski are entering), but more Latin American (Sandoval is leaving, but Scherer, Patrón, and Ezzati are entering) and more Asian (no exits, and three new entries: Rai, Tong, and Tagle).

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Now it will be interesting to see what results the Bergoglio treatment could produce in the other dicasteries. Starting with the congregation for bishops, which assists the pope in the selection of prelates for most of the world: from Europe to the Americas, from Australia to the Philippines.

Currently, out of the 33 members of this congregation, there are 12 Italians and 25 Europeans in all, 4 North Americans, 3 Latin Americans, one from Oceania. It is hard to imagine that these proportions will remain unchanged.

But beyond the numerical proportions, it will be interesting to see whom pope Bergoglio will confirm, appoint, or dismiss in this decisive dicastery.

In this regard it is curious to note how peremptory requests are already arriving from the progressive camp. For example, the “National Catholic Reporter” has called for the head of United States cardinal Raymond L. Burke, too conservative for the magazine’s tastes. But to what extent the pope may wish to listen to these not disinterested recommendations remains to be seen.

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One last observation concerns the secretariat of state. In early December, on the occasion of a couple of book presentations and of a Mass for the repose of the former dean of the diplomatic corps, “L’Osservatore Romano” noted the public appearance of the new personal secretary of the new secretary of state, Archbishop Pietro Parolin.

He is Robert David Murphy, born on February 4, 1973 in Solihull in the West Midlands of England, a few miles from Birmingham. His ecclesiastical biography is not devoid of interest.

After studying literature and civil law at Cambridge, he entered the seminary at the Institut Catholique in Paris in 1995, where he obtained bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and theology. At the invitation of his bishop at the time, Maurice Couve de Murville, he went to Rome and received a licentiate degree in theology from the Gregorian.

In 2001 Murphy was ordained a priest for the diocese of Birmingham, headed since 2000 by the current archbishop of Westminster, Vincent G. Nichols. In 2004 he entered the pontifical ecclesiastical academy, the diplomatic school of the Holy See, headed at the time by Justo Mullor Garcia of Spain. During this period he received a doctorate in fundamental theology from the Gregorian on the theme: “Hierarchy and communion: elements in tension in the exercise of ecclesial authority and the retrieval of a canonical space of reception. A proposal in dialogue with the ecclesiology of Yves Congar, O.P.” His classmates included Roberto Lucchini, future second secretary of cardinal secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone, and Fabrice Rivet, now secretary to the substitute Angelo G. Becciu.

In the summer of 2007, after finishing his studies at the academy, Murphy was sent to the nunciature in Colombia, where he found as nuncio Archbishop Beniamino Stella, the current prefect of the congregation for the clergy, who in October of that same year was called to Rome to head the ecclesiastical academy.

After only one year in Bogotà, in 2008 Murphy was sent to the pontifical nunciature in Argentina, where he became the deputy of the nuncio at the time, Adriano Bernardini, whom the previously cited book by Elisabetta Piqué places at the top of the historical “adversaries in the clergy” of then-archbishop of Buenos Aires Bergoglio. Murphy went to the Argentine nunciature to replace Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, who was sent to Rome, where he still heads the important administrative section of the secretariat of state.

In 2011 Murphy was at first destined for the UN headquarters in Geneva, but then the order was retracted and he remained in Argentina, where between that December and March of 2012 he directed the Vatican embassy “ad interim,” in the interval between the departure of Bernardini, called to head the prestigious nunciature in Italy, and the arrival of the new nuncio, Emil Paul Tscherrig of Switzerland, who – again according to Elisabetta Piqué – would instead have an excellent relationship with Bergoglio.

In the summer of 2012, Murphy was transferred to the nunciature of Berlin. Where he would remain for a little more than a year. Last November, in fact, he returned to Rome to work alongside the new secretary of state.