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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

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And where is God in all this????

As a journalist and as a Catholic, my major problem with this interview as it is presented is that it comes with absolutely no commentary by the interviewer on the answers he elicits from his subject – answers that cry out to be challenged and confronted on the spot, which Pentin, a veteran Vaticanista, does not even attempt to do.

I recognize that it is perfectly legitimate for a Catholic publication like National Catholic Register to publish views that are contrary to the position of the Church or that are critical of the Church, but if the criticism is unfounded, fallacious and even downright untrue, then it is a double disservice to the Church to publish it unchallenged and, as it were, a-critically….

My fisking comments are necessarily lengthier than the statements being commented on, because I can and do marshal objective facts, as well as common-sense opinion, to contradict the interviewee's brazen and mostly unfounded allegations.



Vatican PR solutions
Interview by Edward Pentin
Rome Correspondent



Editor’s Introduction:

The Vatican has been criticized for its so-called PR “gaffes” in recent years, but what lies at the heart of these errors, and how can they be corrected?

Massimo Franco, a veteran political correspondent for Italy’s daily newspaper Corriere della Sera, tries to get to the bottom of the problems in a new book called C’era Una Volta Un Vaticano (Once Upon a Time, There Was a Vatican).

[Already the book title betrays the author’s orientation: he is peddling a myth, as though in 2000 years, the Vatican has not had its high points and low points, and that even the particularly low point which the public perceives it is at today is minor compared to other low points that the Church has undergone in its history. ]

Although a former columnist for the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, Avvenire, he gives more of a political take on the Vatican than perhaps one of faith [Perhaps? There is nothing about the faith at all in Franco's views. His prism is exclusively political, which is not a valid way at all to look at the Vatican!]

But his views could be useful when it comes to possible — and what some say is much needed — reform of the Roman Curia. Franco spoke with Rome correspondent Edward Pentin March 15 in Rome.

[How useful can such views be when they have an obvious 'faith-less' bias and when the author appears to consider the Vatican as nothing more or better than a multinational corporation or a political party, neither of which it is not? Besides, the Register falls into his trap by framing the interview as being about the Vatican’s ‘PR problems’ when Franco himself says these problems are merely a sign of the ‘decline of the Vatican’ in ‘strategic and moral terms’. Especially since Franco’s time reference for such a decline appears to be circumscribed to the Pontificate of Benedict XVI!]


Could you tell us more about the essence of your new book concerning the Vatican and its internal governance?
I think there has been a problem of a lack of strategy since the very beginning of this pontificate, because everyone in the conclave was overwhelmed by the figure of John Paul II. When Benedict XVI was elected, the fact that it was a very quick election, and that he felt himself to be old, meant there couldn’t be any strategy in building up a new system of governance in the Vatican.

[#1 What special qualification does Franco have to be judge, jury and executioner about the ‘internal governance’ of the Vatican? I am almost sure his book abundantly cites those never-named ‘authoritative Vatican sources’ for many of
His allegations, but we all know how self-serving, unreliable and often untrue such references are!

#2 The Conclave was not so ’overwhelmed by the figure of John Paul II’ because they had the common sense to elect4ct the one man who, by their consensus, was the only one who could authoritatively fill the Shoes of the Fisherman with his outstanding qualifications and personal holiness, even following a giant like John Paul II, and even if public opinion had dismissed him because he was not thought to be ‘charismatic’ as his predecessor is.

#3 Franco obviously was not paying attention when, in his homily at the Mass that formally installed him as Pope, Benedict XVI said: “My real programme of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by Him, so that He himself will lead the Church at this hour of our history.”

#4 Popes are not like Presidents or Prime Ministers and do not come to Peter’s Chair strategizing what to do. The Church has had only one strategy in its 2,000-year existence: to do anything that will promote the propagation of Christ and his Gospel. To do that, Popes must respond to problems at hand in order that such problems may not hamper the mission. Even the most political Popes of modern times – Pius IX and Pius XII – did not have any so-called ‘strategy’.]


This [reform] has also proved to be quite difficult because the whole [Vatican] structure was shaped by the Cold War. And yet, during the first years of Benedict XVI and in the last years of John Paul II, the world profoundly changed, and all the framework of the Cold War was over. So there was a disconnect between the new world paradigm — a cultural and geopolitical paradigm — and the way the Vatican went on operating.

[#1 Benedict XVI has always said that no structural reform will make anything better unless there is spiritual reform first among the men who make up the structure!

#2 The ‘Vatican structure’ was not shaped by the Cold War, even if the Vatican did adapt its diplomacy during those years to avoid any further persecution that that already wrought by the Communist regimes on Catholics. The Curia exists basically as it has been for centuries to help the Pope administer a universal Church, and as the world grew more complex and the Church became numerically bigger and more far-flung, offices were added to address new specific functions. Yet for all that, the entire Vatican bureaucracy today does not number more than 2,500 for a church of 1.2 billion members.

#3 The Cold War effectively ended in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Franco certainly cannot claim that John Paul II, whose ‘political agenda’, if one might call it that, in the first 12 years of his Pontificate, was to help bring down Communism, did not change his agenda after that! The task of Vatican diplomacy thereafter was necessarily no longer about the Cold War but was primarily dedicated to advocating peace at any cost rather than violence, no matter how well-intentioned the use of arms.

#4 Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI was actively analyzing and interpreting the new ‘world paradigm’ far in advance and more consistently than anyone on the public scene, and as Pope, he – and the people under him - have been functioning on the basis of that new paradigm, as a glance at his consistent and insistent extra-ecclesial concerns will show. In addition to advocating dialog as the way to resolve conflicts,as John Paul did, this include:
o Religious freedom as a path to peace
o Condemnation of violence in the name of God
o The defense of life, human dignity, and the institutions of marriage and the family
o Denouncing the increasing gap between rich and poor favored by increasing globalization
which marginalizes the poorer and weaker countries
o Genuinely human-centered development schemes
o Man’s duty to protect and conserve the environment
o Productive inter-religious dialog that is oriented towards the positive things that believers
and even non-believers can do together, and not on the impossible goal of arriving
at any common theology
o A courageous appeal for Islam to re-examine its faith in the light of reason
So where is the ‘disconnect between the new world paradigm and the way the Vatican functions’ that Franco so blithely and wrongly claims?]


You mention in the book that a kind of “implosion” of the Vatican has been taking place. What do you mean by that?
It is an implosion of a Vatican, not of the Vatican. It’s the implosion of the kind of governance that used to exist. For example, when the Berlin Wall fell, you had Western secret services, and maybe Russian as well, prepared to deal with and cope with a certain kind of world. When this world wasn’t there any more, they went on operating in the same way as in the past. And yet the world had moved on. The same is true of the Vatican.

For instance, what happened with the [sexual-abuse] scandal: It wasn’t caused by Vatican problems; it’s the consequence of the fact that the situation has changed. In the past, during the Cold War, sex-abuse scandals were perceived as a possible sin, but not a crime. But if there is a “secularization of sin,” it becomes a crime. So public opinion in the West cannot tolerate the fact that the Church deals with these things as though they are just sins. They are crimes, and so Western public opinion wants them to react in that way.


[Does Franco know what ‘implosion’ means? It is the shattering of a structure as a result of internal rather than external factors. Nothing has imploded at the Vatican, despite all the attempts by MSM to make it appear that the overhyped sex-abuse scandal ’damaged’ the Church. Its temporal reputation and temporarily, yes, not the Church itself.

The Pope and the Church stood up very well against an unprecedented and concerted assault by all the secular agencies that shape and influence public opinion. The Pope considered it an opportunity for the Church to renew and purify itself, and in the process, to strengthen itself. It’s not all a done deal yet with everyone concerned, but the Church will always have sinners.

Who recalls today that a year ago, much of MSM was calling on the Pope to resign because they claimed he had shamed the Church or was unfit and unworthy to lead it? Even that assault could not last more than weeks at the most, because there was nothing behind it. They could only tell so many lies and manufacture so many distortions that did not have true legs to stand on, so the critics could not keep it up.]


For instance, what happened with the [sexual-abuse] scandal: It wasn’t caused by Vatican problems; it’s the consequence of the fact that the situation has changed. In the past, during the Cold War, sex-abuse scandals were perceived as a possible sin, but not a crime. But if there is a “secularization of sin,” it becomes a crime. So public opinion in the West cannot tolerate the fact that the Church deals with these things as though they are just sins. They are crimes, and so Western public opinion wants them to react in that way.

[Franco is truly muddled in his thinking.:
#1 The sex-abuse scandals were the result of individual personal acts by priests who betrayed their vocation, and by some of their superiors who chose to cover up for them and completely ignored their victims. The offenses in both cases were the result of personal choices made by those concerned, and were not institutional, whatever the critics may say.

#2 Sin is always sin, and many mortal sins are also crimes. Cold War or not, the Church has never failed to call out crimes for what they are. In fact, even the documents which her critics most frequently cite – ignorantly – as their ‘proof’ that the Church ordered its bishops to cover up for priest offenders, refers to the grave offenses using the Latin word for ‘crime’.

#3 The Cold War had nothing to do with the sex abuse scandals. The peak incidence of these offenses were in the 1970s-1980s, coinciding with the end of the Second Vatican Council and the progressivist interpretation of it that dominated the Church, aggravated by the so-called sexual revolution introduced by the anything-goes counterculture of 1968 which advocated total sexual license and irresponsibility.

This ultra-liberal climate encouraged psychologists and psychiatrists to consider pedophilia and all other sexual perversions as diseases that could be cured, not as punishable crimes. This is an excuse that some bishops have used to justify their failure to punish their criminal priests.

#4 It was only when the pedophile priest scandal first erupted in the United States that the very same ultra-liberals who promoted ( and in many ways, continue to promote) deviant sex suddenly turned prudishly sanctimonious, not so much out of genuine concern for the victims, but because it was a golden opportunity to paint the Church black.

If the scandal had been about Muslim imams or Jewish rabbis, they would probably have rushed to defend them and mitigate their crimes citing their permissive psychologists and psychiatrists.

Is anyone aware that anybody in MSM, or in secular institutions, has done anything to help the victims of abuse other than Catholic institutions themselves? MSM can say they have tirelessly and generously promoted the statements and activities of victim-advocacy groups, but the activities of the latter are so obviously self-serving, and in a way, crassly mercenary, because they encourage victims to sue the Church for everything they can get. Perhaps this inherent dishonesty is the reason they have never been able to come up with more than a few dozen demonstrators even for their best-publicized ‘events’.]


In this way, you see how the Vatican lags behind, because its first reaction was very slow and very confused. There wasn’t a strategy because they couldn’t understand what was going on. It’s the same with the so-called gaffes of the Vatican.

[Once again, Franco just ignores history and objective facts, and Pentin lets him. What was ‘very slow’ and ‘very confused’ about the Vatican reaction?

#1 Except for some cases in Ireland which took place up to 2004, the overwhelming bulk of all the allegations uncovered in 2009-2010 were cases from earlier decades,. – in other words, from the years of inaction, when local bishops simply hushed up the crimes, and victims were generally unwilling to make it known that they had been violated. The prevailing culture worked negatively both ways.

#2 Since 2001, when John Paul II was confronted with the enormous implications of the sex scandal in the US, he gave the CDF under Cardinal Ratzinger the primary responsibility for looking into accusations of sex offenses by priests instead of the local bishops or religious superiors as before.

#3 No one, as far as I know, among the critics of the Church has ever brought up a single case of any allegation brought before the CDF that was ignored or mishandled. That speaks for itself.

#4 Meanwhile, the secular media – and even much of the Catholic media – have simply ignored the other positive and concrete consequences of these offenses coming to light, such as the work done since 2002 by the bishops of the USA and of England and Wales for the protection of children and youth in any Catholic environment, That’s eight years of exemplary work which, unfortunately, other bishops’ conferences afflicted by pedophile priests are just now waking up to.]


The gaffes are not due to problems of external communications. They come from within, from the fact that the information chain inside the Vatican doesn’t work anymore because there is a sort of short-circuiting. Regarding [SSPX bishop] Williamson, the Pope had to admit he didn’t have enough information about him. That was paradoxical.

[#1 Short-circuiting of information within the Vatican was not a factor in the sex-abuse scandal. Until 2000-2002, the information hardly ever reached the Vatican, because local bishops had the competence to deal with it, and those who faced the problem of pedophile priests chose to hush up.

Of course, there was the singular aberration of the eventually disgraced Bishop of Milwaukee who suddenly decided to refer to the CDF a 24-year-old case regarding a priest against whom dozens of accusations had been made, who had been investigated by the police in 1970 and was forced, rightly, to retire at the time although the police found nothing actionable against him (which of course does not mean that he was innocent).

#2 In the cases that MSM keep hammering at as major ‘PR gaffes’ , only two had to do with faulty or deficient information given to the Pope. In both cases, the responsibility is easy to pin.

For the botched nomination of Mons, Wielgus as Archbishop of Poland, the Secretariat of State whose nuncios have the primary responsibility to vet candidate bishops and then make their recommendations to the Vatican, and the Congregation for Bishops who should further vet these candidates so they can make the proper recommendation to the Pope.

For the failure to inform the Pope about Mons. Williamson’s offensive negationist views: Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, who was the Vatican’s liaison with the FSSPX for two decades, and once again, the Congregation for Bishops which, after all, had to issue the decree lifting the excommunication from the FSSPX bishops.

Even if knowing about it beforehasnd would not have affected lifting the excommunications, since Williamson’s personal views, as offensive and wrong as they are, had nothing to do with why he was excommunicated, it would have been possible for the Vatican to cushion the announcement by explaining all about excommunications and its technical meaning as against the general perception of it – which they needed to do anyway, regardless, before, not after the fact!

#3 This is a cheap shot, I admit, but what is ‘paradoxical’ about the Pope admitting he did not get enough information when Franco has just pronounced that there is an ‘information short-circuit’ in the Vatican? Is it likely he does not know what paradoxical means either?]


And, yet, the Vatican has operated like this for a long time — and until recently, it didn't have so many perceived gaffes. What has changed? [What a naive question, playing right into Franco’s hand! At least Pentin used the adjective ‘perceived’ for the so-called gaffes. The obvious change is that Benedict XVI is now Pope, fair game and open season all the time for everyone in the MSM – and for some on the Catholic extreme right and left. Benedict’s media critics have not changed their portrayal of him as a villain according to the Black Myth they created when he was cardinal and took the heat for defending the faith, which was his duty, specifically for proclaiming Catholic teaching that all the Popes, including the scoundrel Popes, have always proclaimed. But they trained their guns on him and not on John Paul II, who said exactly the same things, because he was the 'convenient villain' to serve as a foil and surrogate target for the 'untouchable' megastar Pope.

The Vatican has to rethink the internal processes of information. The first one, the most superficial, is an incapacity to convey the right message. But there is a deeper problem, which is elaboration of the message. I mean that the problem is not just the way you communicate but what you communicate. And I think there is a cultural confusion on themes like pedophilia or power struggles inside the Curia. You never saw cardinals pointing at each other [publicly] like Cardinals Schönborn and Sodano did last year. So this is very confusing and astonishing for Catholic public opinion — and not only for them.

[#1 Incapacity to convey the right message? Has the Church ever had a better, clearer, more consistent and more authoritative bearer/teacher of the Christian message in modern times than Benedict XVI? Franco keeps mistaking the tree in his tunnel vision – i.e., PR gaffes - for the forest.

If Franco means the communications deficiencies of the Vatican Press Office, it may have its deficiencies, but outside of the Wielgus and Williamson cases, what has it really botched? And it certainly is not conveying the wrong message because it faithfully transmits the teaching of the Pope.

And yet, the Press Office is not the whole of Vatican communications. Vatican Radio is its most immediate and by far most efficient communications medium, if anyone in the hoity-toity MSM would just take the trouble to listen to what they do on their 24-hour broadcasts, or failing that, check out what they post online of their broadcast content.

#2 Franco is exaggerating his account of the Schoenborn-Sodano episode, first because, the accusation was one-sided: Sodano had the grace not to take Schoenborn’s bait and respond – it would have been unseemly for the Dean of Cardinals, who nonetheless, has been retired from the Roman Curia since 2006.

#3 No Curial power struggle was involved here because neither Schoenborn nor Sodano are in the Curia.

#4 It was hardly the first nor will it be the last time that there are feuding cardinals in the long history of the Church! Besides, who among the vast Catholic population but people who work in Catholic media and Vatican news junkies would have been aware of the episode, much less for it to be ”confusing and astonishing for Catholic public opinion’????]


In the book you link the problems facing the Vatican with the global economic crisis, which began in the United States. Is there really a connection?

I don’t know if there’s a connection, but there is a very strange and striking coincidence, because if we think of Sept. 11 and the financial bubble of Wall Street of 2008, we can see a strange coincidence between that explosion and the explosion of the sex-abuse scandal. I think we can say, therefore, that, as we have seen that the U.S. unipolarism, in terms of military strategy and the economy, is over, so we could say that the moral unipolarism of the Vatican on ethics is also over. These two collapses correspond to one another. So, I think it’s a reflection of the decline of the West, the primacy of the West, both on a strategic and moral level.

[More muddlement!
#1 The sex scandal really erupted in 2000-2002, and 2009-2010 was just a reprisal. So to find a ‘coincidence’ between that 'repeat' and the 2008 financial scandal that hit Wall Street is truly stretching! i

#2 Franco is enamored of his neologism, ‘unipolarism’, which is not analogous in the examples he cites. What he calls ‘US unipolarism’ in temporal affairs means that the US had been the only superpower since the end of the Cold War – and it is now increasingly challenged by China both in economic and military terms.

But ‘Vatican unipolarism on ethics' has never been challenged in modern times, for the simple reason that it has remained the only institution that has been steadfast about its ethical values and which is the only universally recognized moral authority even by those who disagree with Church teachings. That is not ‘over’ at all! Otherwise, the secular news agencies would stop reporting anything the Pope says that has to do with international affairs or events on the world scene.

#3 There is therefore absolutely no 'coincidence' nor analogy at all because Vatican morals have not collapsed.

#4 Since Catholic morality has not collapsed despite widespread dissent from the secular world and from many Catholics in the West, the Vatican and the Church are certainly not a part of the moral decline of the West!


But the Vatican isn’t just the West. It represents the central governance of the universal Church. [Pentin's one feeble attempt to challenge Franco!]
The Vatican is not the West, but it has represented the values of the West throughout the world. [/COLORE][NOT AT ALL! It has represented the values of Christianity throughout the world, And until the past few decades, those values were also the prevailing values of the West, but not anymore. And the Church has certainly not been remiss about denouncing the un-Christian values that the secular West now promotes!]

Of course, it’s also true that the United States is not the West either, and yet it has wanted to shape democracy all over the world. But, in the same way, and not by chance,] [????] the Pope created a pontifical council to re-evangelize the West; he took the name of Benedict because of a very deep perception that the crisis starts from the West and victory will be either won or lost in the West.

[Why does Franco insist on making analogies between the temporal strategic objectives of the United States and the divine mission of the Church? The Pope’s decision to re-evangelize the West did not require ‘very deep perception’ on his part – it is obvious to anyone who keeps abreast of the news – that the crisis starts from the West’!

He created the new council because two after decades that the Church has been speaking of ‘new evangelization’ since John Paul II launched the idea, it was time to institutionalize it. And the main object for ‘new evangelization’ has always been the Western secularized lands that have to be re-Christianized.]


So there is a coincidence, a strategic unipolarism. There’s a financial unipolarism which explodes and a moral unipolarism that explodes with the sex-abuse scandals. [UGHHHH! Such forced, fallacious and ultimately meaningless analogies!]

So you see the international prestige of the Vatican in some ways declining?
The Vatican’s international agenda is very much a focus of discussion. It’s not as focused as it was just 10 to 15 years ago.

I had a very strange experience recently. I met about 30 ambassadors accredited to the Holy See from all over the world in order to discuss the Vatican in international politics. And during these discussions, some of them admitted that they didn’t know if, in 10 years’ time, there would still be an embassy to the Holy See for their countries because the Vatican doesn’t transmit an international agenda anymore.

One of them told me he felt as if he were the last ambassador in Venice in 1797 — the time when the city was occupied and destroyed by Napoleon. So there is a perception that the Vatican, on the international level, is losing influence
.


[#1 In the face of all objective fact, and on the basis of an anecdote that is merely anecdotal and does not even sound plausible, Franco claims that the Vatican’s international agenda is not as focused as it was 10-15 years ago! That would take us to 1995-2000. What was the focus of the agenda then, and what is it now?

Earlier, I listed down the issues that have been central to Benedict’s concerns in international affairs. The world does not just have a single overriding problem. That the Pope manages to pay attention to all his major concerns is not lack of focus – it’s called looking at the big picture instead of having tunnel vision.

#2 Franco takes the purported opinion of one ambassador to mean that the Vatican is losing influence on the international level. Obviously, neither he nor his putative ambassador ever read the Wikileaks cables about how the United Sates, at least, appreciates the Vatican’s influence.

It’s not as if that influence ever meant that it could make nations do things their government leaders don’t want to do. Vatican influence has always meant that you can’t count out the Pope and what he says because, like it or not, he has a moral authority that no one else possesses, and he leads 1.2 billion faithful. And that is why secular news agency report it every time the Pope says something that touches on the international scene, even if he can only speak in the most general terms.]


But could this simply be part of what Benedict XVI has described as the Church becoming made up of “creative minorities”?
Benedict XVI deserves a lot of credit for this — he foresaw what was going to happen, and he created this expression “creative minority.” The problem is that, so far, first of all in the West, not many people see Catholicism as a minority — although, actually, it is. Secondly, “creative minority” is a good phrase, but, so far, it’s just a minority. So it’s a big question if it can become a creative minority.

[Oops! I cannot believe that Franco does not know where the term ‘creative minority’ comes from. When Cardinal Ratiznger first used it, he appropriately said he was using a term from historian Arnold Toynbee!

Franco obviously misunderstands thoroughly what the term means. Cardinal Ratzinger did not intend it to mean the European Catholics as they are today. He was referring to a foreseeble future where rampant secularization could conceivablty reduce them to small communities that would then have all the more incentive to be ‘creative minorities’. Here is how he ended his analysis, in the essay ‘Europe and its discontents’, which was included in the book Without Roots:

Here we must agree with Toynbee, that the fate of a society always depends on its creative minorities. Christian believers should look upon themselves as just such a creative minority, helping Europe to reclaim what is best in its heritage and thereby to place itself at the service of all humankind.

But Franco is also so short-sighted or willfully blind that he does not recognize ‘creative minorities’ that already exist in the secular wilderness – lay groups like Opus Dei, C&L, and the Focolari, and the unsung communities of religious men and women who continue to be creative wielders of the medieval ‘ora et labora’ that saved Western civilization in the Dark Ages.

Can this be applied to the Vatican?
The Vatican is very much looking inward. There is a strong Curia and a sort of disconnect between the Curia, Rome and the national conferences of bishops.

[None of the above makes sense. Obviously, the Vatican is not just looking inwards – and its ‘looking inward’ under Benedict XVI is an examination of the Church itself with a view to working a genuine interior renewal.

And the ‘disconnects’ in the Church are between those prelates who look on the Church as Franco does, namely, nothing but a temporal career choice, and the true men of God who seek to live the Gospel message.

The over-rated bishops’ conferences are very much a case in point – they have tended to become dubious power bases for the bishops instead of pastoral instruments to promote the spiritual good of their people, and as Cardinal Ratzinger previously pointed out, a protective umbrella under which to shirk individual responsibility.]


Some have said there’s too much patronage in the Curia, too many favors given to friends and associates, rather than based on merit. Is this a major part of the problem? [What is Pentin’s basis for saying this? How many favors and patronage can any Curia head dispense, seeing as there are only so many posts available? Other than the Propaganda Fide, no dicastery is in any position to hand out any material benefits!]]

There are two problems at the moment. The first is that the Church is split, so it’s as though the conclave never finished. Under the leadership of Benedict XVI, factions have fought each other very strongly, compared to the past.

[No! The difference from the past is that under Benedict XVI, there was finally some spine to oppose the progressivists who had managed to dominate the Church during four decades when ‘conservative’ was considered anthema. And lo and behold, for a change, Catholic orthodoxy has managed to re-establish itself as a force within the Church, and by all accounts, the progressivists and spiritists are fighting a rearguard action.]

Secondly, there is a problem of patronage. For instance, during the last consistory, it was very Eurocentric and Curiacentric: The new cardinals were friends of friends, and that’s because of a lack of strategy.

{Eurocentric and Curiacentric! This issue was brought up briefly by the usual suspects and easily dismissed last November.

#1 Recently appointed Curial heads whose positions traditionally come with a cardinalate were made cardinal. Benedict XVI would not have appointed them to head their respective dicasteries to begin with, if they were not qualified, not just for the office, but also as potential cardinals. There were relatively many of them this time because Benedict XVI had just completed the change-over from the last of the Wojtyla Curial appointees to retire.

#2 No Third World prelate with the right qualifications was passed over.

#3 For some time more, perhaps another 10 years, it is likely that there will be more European candidates for cardinal than friom the Third World, for the simple reason that they have had the longest tradition and therefore, still have a deeper bench of candidates by training.

#4 Franco’s catch-all diagnosis, ‘lack of strategy’, has nothing to do with how cardinals are chosen, because it would be wrong to choose new cardinals on the basis of ‘strategic utility’ rather than merit. And which among those new cardinals became cardinal because they were ‘friends of friends’. Friends of whose friends? Benedict’s? ]


The Pope likes to choose friends, as they are people he already knows and trusts.
Yes, this Pope is an intellectual, a very respected man, but he sees that there isn’t much time to go forward. He believes he was forced to choose people he knew, on whom he could rely. And that is not exactly the best way to deal with as complex an organization as the Vatican, in this period of speed and precision.

[Excuse me! Because the Pope chooses people to work with who think like he does and whom he can rely on - he would be foolish to choose anyone he cannot rely on - does not mean that the people he chooses are unqualified for what they have to do. What matters is that he can work with them and they do what they have to do,]

So what is the way forward? Should the Curia become more international, for example?
The Curia is already internationalized. The problem is a change of mentality, not the national identity of the officials. I think the Church will be forced to change. Indeed, the risk could be not that a Vatican is over, but that the Vatican could face big difficulties.

I cannot believe the banality and senselessness of this last answer, and yet it perfelctly epitomizes the banality and senselessness of Franco’s views.

By the way, back to my question at the head of this post: Does Franco ever mention Christ or God in his book? He never once mentions those words in this interview. And Pentin is too awed? cowed? stultified? by his subject not to bring it up either!]


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/04/2011 16:58]
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