On July 3, in the preceding page of this thread, I posted a commentary by the Catholic Herald’s Fr. Lucie Smith on the dismissal of Cardinal Mueller
from the Curia, in which he notes that “The Pope has told Cardinal Müller that from now on all heads of dicastery will serve five years only.
Which I felt compelled to counter right away with what I believe to be well-founded reasonable skepticism, as follows:
[Let's see how that works out in practice:
Cardinal Amato, who was named by Benedict XVI to head the Congregation for Sainthood causes on July 9, 2008, was entitled to serve until July 9, 2013, and yet, on March 16, 2013, when the new pope confirmed most of the Curial officials in place at the time, Amato was the only one who was placed 'on hold' with the notice of 'donec alter provideatur'(until otherwise provided), for some reason that has never been explained. Likewise, he has now continued to be Prefect for another four years this July 9, without a reappointment from the pope, who has not even invoked the age-75 retirement rule for Amato who turned 79 last month. He may even get to serve a full five-year term by next year, even if he is compelled to resign when he turns 80!
More importantly, Cardinal Ouellet was named Prefect of Bishops by Benedict XVI on June 30, 2010. Like all the other Curial officials, his appointment was considered terminated when Benedict XVI resigned, but Pope Francis 'confirmed' him in the position on March 16, 2013, as was the now-terminated Cardinal Mueller. Yet Ouellet's original 5-year term would have ended on June 30, 2015 - i.e., two years before Mueller's did - at which time he should have been reappointed or dismissed by this pope, but obviously he is still in place and I do not see any record that he was reappointed at all.
If the papal confirmation of the Curial appointments on March 16, 2013, meant that each official was thereby starting a new five-year term, then Mueller should have been good to stay until March 16, 2018. Amato, Ouellet and Mueller, BTW, were not only Benedict XVI appointees but also considered among the foremost 'Ratzingerians' in the Catholic hierarchy, even if Ouellet immediately turned his coat after March 13, 2013.
Consider the first dicastery head named by this Pope on Sept 21, 2013 - now Cardinal Beniamino Stella to replace the demoted Cardinal Mauro Piacenza as head of the Congregation for the Clergy, and considered by most Vatican insiders as the 'stealth figure' among the pope's closest advisers. Does anyone think this pope will compel him to leave when his term ends in 2018? AThat's as likely as that he will compel Cardinal Parolin to leave State in October 2018 when his five-year term ends!
So, Fr Lucie-Martin, there is not necessarily a rule, because all totalitarian leaders, whether czar or Caudillo Maximo de la Iglesia Catolica, can and usually are arbitrary.]
I bring this up because one week later, Sandro Magister on his blogpost today, apparently went through the same exercise I did with the few cardinals I mentioned above, except he goes through all of the major players in the Curia.
I got my information from the www.catholichierarchy.org site which I have always consulted for the ecclesial biodata of prelates, bishops and cardinals I wish to look up, as it presents this in clear tabular chronological form, and has always appeared to me to keep itself up to date. I doublechecked its information against the individual Wikipedia entries for the cardinals concerned. You may doublecheck yourself. Yet Mr. Magister is, of course, a veteran Vaticanista and topnotch investigative journalist, so how can he be wrong about Cardinals Amato and Ouellet? Anyway, here is his post:
In the Curia, ‘no more than five years service
and then out’, the pope tells Cardinal Mueller –
Really? Let’s wait and see what happens to his pets!
By Sandro Magister
SETTIMO CIELO
July 10, 2017
Commenting in
Allgemeine Zeitung on his removal as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, upon the expiration of his five-year mandate on July 2, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller reported that Pope Francis “no longer intends to prolong roles in the curia beyond five years, and that he was the first one to whom this practice has been applied.”
That Müller’s removal is the first of this kind is beyond a doubt. So much so that in the days and months leading up to it,
other officials in the curia whose terms expired were kept in their positions by the pope.
[I obviously missed the news!] But it remains to be seen if in the future everyone will be removed at the end of their five years.
Francis loves to move with a great deal of freedom when it comes to the rules, which moreover include two age limits: 75, when a resignation letter is supposed to be sent by all sitting bishops to the pope, and the age of 80, when all curial positions are supposed to expire automatically.
For example, the dean of the tribunal of the Roman Rota,
Monsignor Pio Vito Pinto, is 76 but remains in his position. And it is doubtful that Francis will want to take him from it on September 22, when his five-year term will expire.
To Pinto, in fact, the pope has entrusted himself “in toto” for the reform of the processes of marital nullity, in spite of his mediocre credentials as a canonist and the criticisms that have been heaped upon him because of the disjointed arrangement of the new procedures.
Not only that. Last June 19, Francis placed beside him as chancellor of the Roman Rota his protege
Daniele Cancilla, the first layman to be promoted to this important role, in spite of the fact that he had been fired for bad conduct from the Italian episcopal conference where he had long been in charge of aid for foreign dioceses but where he had also forged a friendship with none other than the archbishop of Buenos Aires at the time, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, one of the beneficiaries.
[Ah so, this partly explains the reference made by Massimo Franco in his recent Corriere article to some hanky-panky regarding the aid to Third World dioceses by the CEI in Argentina!]
Returning to the Müller case, it must also be noted that Francis is reshaping the CDF to his own liking not only with the removal of the prefect unacceptable to him, but even more with the preceding and unexpected appointment as undersecretary of a man closely bound to him,
Monsignor Giacomo Morandi, called there from outside - he was vicar general of the diocese of Modena - on the advice of Cardinal Beniamino Stella, a former nuncio to Cuba and Colombia, and now the Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, perhaps the closest to Bergoglio among all the cardinals of the curia.
It was on Morandi’s advice that the pope summarily fired, a few months ago, three high-ranking from the CDF without explaining why to Cardinal Mueller. A firing that made quite a stir.
But let’s take a more detailed look at the state of service of various curia officials whose mandates have expired in recent days and months but have remained at their posts.
- Last July 1, the day before Müller’s removal, brought the end of a second five-year term for Argentine
Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, prefect of the congregation for the Oriental Churches. But he’s still there.
[Sandri was one of the cardinals I had originally lined up for my July 3 commentary, because this Argentine cardinal, who was one of the triumvirate of powerful cardinals (along with Cardinals Sodano and Re] who administratively backstopped John Paul II in his final years, had been Deputy Secretary of State (Sostituto) since September 2000, until Benedict XVI named him Prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches in June 2007.
The entire Benedict Curia was considered resigned as of the time he resigned, but the new pope confirmed almost all of them – with the curious exception of Cardinal Amato as I pointed out earlier – to stay in their respective posts, including Cardinals Bertone and Mueller. But again, as I pointed out in the case of Mueller, this confirmation by Bergoglio in March 2013 did not mean that their terms began again from zero – otherwise, Mueller would have had the right to stay on till March 2018.
I decided not to include the Sandri case in my comments on July 3 because I could find no record that Benedict XVI re-appointed him in June 2012, when his first five-year term ended, nor did Bergoglio subsequently re-appoint him, although in February 2014 – almost two years since his first term expired - he ‘confirmed’ Sandri as Prefect when he announced some structural changes to the Congregation. Did that mean a new five-year-term? Obviously not, if we go by what happened to all the Curial heads ‘confirmed’ by Bergoglio in March 2013. Sandri therefore appears to be past his eighth year as Prefect without benefit of reappointment after his first five-year term ended.]
- June 26 brought the end of a five-year term for English Archbishop Arthur Roche, Secretary of the Congregation for Divine worship. But Cardinal prefect Robert Sarah still finds him at his side, and certainly not to his satisfaction considering their clashing viewpoints.
- Last February 15 brought the end of a second five-year term for Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. But Pope Francis has not removed him, in spite of the fact that he is over the age of 79. Enlisted among the defenders of communion for the divorced and remarried, Coccopalmerio seems to have survived even the scandal that three months ago toppled his former secretary, Monsignor Luigi Capozzi, caught in flagrante by the Vatican gendarmes in his apartment in the building of the Sant'Uffizio during a drug-fueled gay sex party.
- August 18, 2016 was the 75th birthday of Cardinal Beniamino Stella, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, and very influential with the pope. But he is still in office. [Theoretically, of course, he can legitimately stay until he turns 80, well beyond the 2018 end of his five-year term.]
And now let’s see a list of curia heads whose terms will expire in the near future and whom the pope - according to what Müller has reported - should be dismissing one by one:
- Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, will end his second five-year term as president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue in September.
- Likewise, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, ends his second five-year term in September – and turns 75 the following month.
- September 8 will be the 75th birthday of the Argentine bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and of Social Sciences, who will finish his fourth five-year term in October 2018. [In other words, Sorondo managed to serve as chancellor of these academies through John Paul II, Benedict XVI and now his fellow Argentine Bergoglio. Yet Sorondo never made news under the two earlier popes – he was a silent administrative officer - until he opened his wings and spread them wide under Bergoglio, outrageously pushing his most radical agenda items, from the environment to bioethics to the politics of poverty.]
- September 22 will bring the end, as stated above, of the five-year term of 76-year-old Monsignor Pinto, dean of the Roman Rota.
- October 1 will be the 75th birthday of Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, president of the Governorate of Vatican City State. [He was named to this post by Benedict XVI in September 2011, and theoretically his five-year term would have ended in September 2016. He has not been formally reappointed, but he also happens to be one of the cardinals in the pope’s advisory Council of Nine, and if he were on a second five-year-term, he could stay in office till 2021 when it ends and when he also turns 80.]
- October 1 will bring the end of a second five-year term for pontifical master of ceremonies Monsignor Guido Marini. [He was first appointed by Benedict XVI in October 2007, and would have been reappointed in October 2012. but never formally, acording to the record.]
- On December 7 it will be Archbishop Georg Gänswein, secretary of Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, who ends his five-year term as Prefect of the Pontifical Household. [Will Bergoglio do a Mueller 2.0 with Gaenswein?]
- February 3, 2018 will be the 75th birthday of Cardinal Domenico Calcagno, president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, APSA, who has close ties with Pope Francis and has remained in his role even after the expiration of his first five-year term on July 7, 2016. [Calcagno is a very curious case, because during Benedict XVI’s Pontificate, where he was openly identified as ‘Cardinal Bertone’s man’, he was very often under fire for apparently opposing the financial transparency measures legislated by Benedict XVI with the help of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi in 2010. Gotti Tedeschi has since made it known that the 2010 law was substantially amended by Bertone and company in 2011-2012 in a way that ‘weakened’ the measures. The APSA which Calcagno heads was transformed into a virtual ministry of finance, functions which devolved to the new Secretariat of the Economy in February 2014 but which have since been substantially recovered by APSA, apparently on the strength of Calcagno’s ‘unexplained’ clout with Bergoglio.]
- On April 6, 2018, Archbishop José Rodríguez Carballo will end his five-year term as Secretary of the Congregation for the Religious. [This Spanish prelate was Superior General of the Franciscan Order at the time Bergoglio made him his first-ever appointee to the Curia in April 2013. He has since been involved in two major scandals – the Vatican takeover of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, and the revelation in December 2014 of a financial mess involving tens of millions of dollars missing from the Order’s accounts, invested in offshore companies, in addition to accounts held in Swiss banks which Swiss prosecutors said were used for illegal operations including arms and drug trafficking, and bringing serious financial debt and near-bankruptcy to the Order, according to the results of an investigation ordered by Rodiguez Carballo’s successor as SG, the American Michael Perry. But apparently Rodriguez Carballo is very well Teflon-clad in this Pontificate.]
- July 9 will bring the expiration of a second term [that was never formally granted, as far as I can research] for Cardinal Angelo Amato - who will be 80 years old as of that date - prefect of the congregation for the causes of saints. [I am surprised Magister does not refer to the ‘donec aliter promoveatur’ proviso tacked on to Amato by Bergoglio in March 2013. As far as I can search, it has not been lifted, though Amato will complete a full second five-year-term by July next year!]
- July 10 of 2018 will be the 75th birthday of Archbishop Joseph Augustine Di Noia, Adjunct Secretary of the CDF, confirmed in this role on September 21, 2013 “until reaching the age of 75.” [That's a curious proviso to spell out!]
- August 3, 2018 will bring the end of a first five-year term for the Almoner of His Holiness, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski.
- September 21, 2018 will bring the end of a five-year term for the Secretary General of the Bishops’ Synod, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, who is already 77 years old and is another favorite of Pope Francis. [And will conceivably stay on till he is 80.]
- October 12, 2018 will be the turn of Brazilian archbishop Ilson de Jesus Montanari, at the end of his first five-year term as Secretary of the Congregation for Bishops, placed in this crucial role by Pope Francis himself, to whom he reports directly. [Aha!, he’s Cardinal Ouellet’s ball-and-chain!]
Theoretically, these are all the foreseeable dismissals, going by Bergoglio’s ‘Mueller rule’, but in practice, what will he really do, especially about his pets? The bets are open.
[There were a number of 'new' Curial appointments in 2016 with the formation of three new super-dicasteries, but their terms will not end until 2021!]
Interestingly, the odious Robert Mickens tackles the same subject that Magister in his Letter from Rome posted on COMMONWEAL today.
www.commonwealmagazine.org/letter-rome-129
But his presentation is sketchier and less complete than Magister's.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/07/2017 04:22]