Pope Francis speaks in St. Peter’s Square Oct. 15, 2022. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Rome Newsroom, Nov 22, 2022 / 12:30 pm (CNA).
Why did Pope Francis dismiss the entire leadership of the Church’s worldwide charity arm Tuesday?
What role will Pier Francesco Pinelli play as temporary administrator of Caritas Internationalis, appointed by papal decree on Nov. 22?
A key date to understanding the move and how it aligns with the pope’s broader reforms is Oct. 15, 2022.
On that day, Pope Francis received in audience at the Vatican Father Giacomo Canobbio and delegates of Bain Capital. The financial investment firm is where Pinelli previously worked. And Canobbio is the priest who, without announcement, was appointed by Pope Francis to the role of commissioner of the Pontifical Lateran University.
Both appointments are typical for the pontiff and his preferred modus operandi: Pope Francis sends an inspection or appoints a commissioner whenever he wants to reform something.
The papacy of commissioners
There were no apparent reasons for appointing a commissioner to Caritas Internationalis — just as there were no apparent reasons for appointing a commissioner at the Pontifical Lateran University.
However, Pope Francis has previously ordered a number of inspections.
Bishop Claudio Maniago was made the inspector of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, after which the pope appointed Archbishop Arthur Roche as prefect of the dicastery. Next, Bishop Egidio Miragoli inspected the Congregation of the Clergy, which was still in progress when the pope appointed the Korean bishop Lazzaro You Heung-sik — later created cardinal— as prefect of the dicastery.
At the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis appointed several commissions.
One such body was the commission of reference on the administrative-economic structures of the Holy See, known by its Italian acronym COSEA. Another was CRIOR, the commission for studying the Institute of Works of Religion reform, commonly known as the Vatican Bank.
Their work, once completed, resulted in the extensive overhaul of the Vatican’s financial departments and the new Institute of Works of Religion statutes, promulgated in 2019.
However, the appointment of a commissioner in Caritas Internationalis has another clear precedent: the inspection of the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development.
The inspection took place in July 2021 and was led by Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago. The team also included Sister Helen Alford, vice-rector of the Pontifical Angelicum University, an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences; and Pinelli, the new administrator of Caritas Internationalis.
Pinelli’s profile
A trained engineer and experienced manager, Pinelli has worked with several institutions as well as a consultant for management and investment firms.
According to Vatican rumors not officially confirmed but provided to CNA from multiple sources, Pinelli was also involved in restructuring what is now the Dicastery for Integral Human Development.
A press release from the dicastery said Pinelli was an engineer “with a more humanist than technical way of proceeding” and that he was “formed in Ignatian spirituality,” a man who “from an early age was active as a volunteer working with recovering drugs addicts, in development cooperation, support for missionary works, and catechesis.” The statement also noted that he is married with three children and three grandchildren.
The release also emphasized that “in 33 years of work,” Pinelli had gained managerial experience in different sectors, including a large energy company.
Having worked both as a project manager for energy companies and as a management consultant for Bain, Pinelli also has experience working with religious and secular works and institutions, according to the release.
Obviously, his formation and positions in some Jesuit institutions may have played a role. It seems likely that Cardinal Michael Czerny, SJ, the current prefect of the dicastery, had a word in involving him and others.
However, it is still hard to assess which issues are at stake. It seems clear that the pope wants to reform Caritas Internationalis, including its statutes and bylaws.
Founded in 1951, the Catholic confederation is made up of 162 charitable organizations based in 200 countries around the world. Its headquarters are located on Vatican territory in Rome, and the Vatican oversees its activity.
According to Czerny’s dicastery, “no evidence emerged of financial mismanagement or sexual impropriety”; however, “deficiencies were noted in management and procedures, seriously prejudicing team spirit and staff morale.”
Pinelli’s task
The reform of the statutes will be the first task of the new commissioner.
Pinelli will be assisted by Maria Amparo Alonso Escobar, Caritas Internationalis’ head of advocacy, and by Jesuit Father Manuel Morujão, who will provide personal and spiritual accompaniment to Caritas employees, according to Pope Francis’ decree.
In May 2023, the next Caritas Internationalis general assembly is expected to be held in Rome, with the appointment of the new president, general secretary, and treasurer. By then, the reform process will likely be completed.
Caritas Internationalis will undergo a review “in order to improve its management norms and procedures — even while financial matters have been well-handled and fundraising goals regularly achieved — and so better to serve its member charitable organizations around the world.”
However, a reform of the statutes already took place in 2019 and was approved by the pope with a rescript of Jan. 13, 2020.
As for the change of the statutes of Caritas Internationalis, it was simply a matter of passing the competencies from the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, which no longer exists, to the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, which has absorbed its functions.
As for the rules of procedure, these changes were not communicated. But they generally accepted some of the requests approved by the Caritas General Assembly, which envisaged encouraging the presence of women within the highest representative bodies and including two young people in the same representative bodies.
In particular, there was talk of the Representative Council of the federation, abbreviated with the name RE.CO., the acronym for Representative Council. These indications have now been implemented and will become operational.
The structure of Caritas Internationalis was thus “adjusted” and adapted to the reform of the Curia.
However, the statutes of Caritas Internationalis remained confirmed in the structure as Pope Benedict XVI reformed them in 2012. Those statutes strengthened the collaboration between Caritas Internationalis and the Holy See and clearly outlined the competencies of the Vatican Secretariat of State.
Not only that: the new structure of Caritas Internationalis gave greater coordination to departments and bodies connected to the Holy See, which also concerned doctrinal aspects.
The rationale behind Benedict XVI’s reform
It is noteworthy that the 2012 reform was part of a more extensive project by Benedict XVI to accomplish Pastor Bonus’s provisions fully.
Pastor Bonus was the apostolic constitution that regulated the functions and tasks of the Curia offices, and Praedicate Evangelium now replaces that.
However, the reform came after a governance crisis. In 2011, the Secretariat of State did not approve the renomination of the former secretary general, Lesley-Anne Knight. (However, her work was praised by the president of Caritas Internationalis at the time, Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodriguez Maradiaga.) As a result, she was replaced by Michel Roy, a Frenchman who worked with Secours Catholique — the Caritas in France.
Knight’s non-confirmation also stemmed from the new approach given with the subsequent reform of Caritas Internationalis.
It was an approach that derived from the formulation of Benedict XVI’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate. In the encyclical, Benedict XVI stressed that human development and foreign aid could not be separated from the demand for truth. The encyclical also pointed to the fact that many international organizations were promoting abortion, contraception, sterilization, and euthanasia.
This was an approach that Knight did not fully share, as she publicly explained to the media at the time.
While some approved of Knight’s departure, others were disappointed. Despite a robust generational change in Caritas Internationalis in recent years, these divisive feelings may have lingered in the background and fueled some complaints about “management and procedures.”
What will the new reform look like?
The tone of the dicastery’s press release suggests that the reform will be more managerial. But, above all, it is a substantial change in philosophy from the reform of Benedict XVI.
In short, it could be another paradigm shift by Pope Francis, comparable to some degree to his restrictions of the Traditional Latin Mass.
From this point of view, Pope Francis has identified several people to help complete his changes to the Church’s structure.
In carrying out the reform, the pope does not hesitate to demote someone like Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, current president of Caritas, who now finds himself mandated to “liaise” with Pinelli and his staff for the upcoming general assembly.
Tagle was rumored to be appointed the next prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops. Even if these rumors were to be confirmed, Tagle’s public image has now been compromised by the Caritas decision. This will also weigh in a future conclave.
Pope Francis, however, is completing his goals. As he said in one of his homilies in the days of the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 — and also in a meeting with the Candia Foundation in April — he remains critical of humanitarian organizations that do good work but spend 60% of their budget on wages. The pope called on them to keep costs to a minimum, “so that most of the money goes to the people.”
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Instead of 152 paragraphs and 47 pages, what the progressives wanted is 11 words in one line.” Maybe this: “Synodality is to Fatherhood as Woodstock is to the Apostolic Succession”.
And, too, about now returning to what the International Theological Commission wrote about synodality in 2018, there’s this:
“…It is essential that, taken as a whole, the participants give a meaningful and balanced image of the local Church, reflecting different vocations, ministries, charisms, competencies, social status and geographical origin. The bishop, the successor of the apostles [!] and shepherd of his flock [!] who convokes and presides over the local Church synod, is called to exercise there the ministry of unity and leadership with the authority which belongs to him [!]” (n. 79).
Had Grech, Hollerich & Co. folded this foundation into their vademecum, rather than with bishops reduced “primarily as facilitators,” much ink need not have been spilled in the past few years, and today the progressives would be spared much cognitive dissonance.
So, still, yes to always better “listening” and being heard, but in a theologians’ food fight, less herding of the laity to be conned, scripted, and conscripted.
“So what were we discussing?” Indeed.
“What were we discussing?” And, what more, or less, COULD have been discussed?
Literally, just now, yours truly found a dated but possibly relevant article tucked in a book on my random and sparse shelf. On February 14, 2013, three days after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation and two weeks before the resignation took effect, and a full month before his successor was elected (March 13), he (Benedict) addressed the clergy in Rome, “without notes and from the heart.”
Writer Rev. Matthew L. Lamb recalled the purpose of the Council, reflected in the Documents, and then he quotes generously the conclusion of Benedict’s “electrifying” address:
“I would now would like to add another point: there was the Council of the fathers—the true Church—but there was also the Council of the media. It was almost a Council unto itself, and the world perceived the Council through these, through the media. Therefore the Council that immediately and efficiently arrived to the people was that of the media, not that of the fathers. And while the Council of the father was realized within the faith, and was a Council of the faith that seeks intellectus, that seeks to understand itself and seeks to understand the signs of God at that moment, that seeks to respond to the challenge of God at that moment and to find in the word of God the word for today and tomorrow, while the whole Council—as have said—was moving within the faith, as fides quaerens intellectum, the Council the journalists was not realized, naturally, within the faith, but within the categories of today’s media meaning outside of the faith, with a different hermeneutic. It was a political hermeneutic.
“For the media, the Council was a political struggle, a power struggle between different currents in the Church. It was obvious that the media were taking sides with that part which seemed to them to have the most in common with their world. These were those who were seeking the decentralization of the Church, power for the bishops and then, through the expression ‘people of God,’ the power of the people, of the laity. Ther was this threefold question: the power of the pope, then transferred to the power of the bishops and to the power of all, popular sovereignty.Naturally, for them this was the side to approve of, to promulgate, to favor.
“And so also for the liturgy: the liturgy was not of interest as an act of faith, but as a matter where understandable things are done, a matter of community activity, a profane matter. And we know that there was a tendency, that was also founded historically, to say: sacrality is a pagan thing, perhaps even in the Old Testament, but in the New all that matters is that Christ died outside: that is, outside of the gates, meaning in the profane world. A sacrality therefore to be brought to an end, profanity of worship as well: worship is not worship but an act of the whole, of common participation and thus also participation as activity.
“These translations, trivialization of the idea of the Council were virulent in the praxis of the application of liturgical reform; they were born in a vision of the Council outside of its proper key, that of faith. And thus also in the question of Scripture: Scripture is a book, historical, to be treated historically and nothing else, and so on. We know how this Council of the media was accessible to all. Therefore, this was the dominant, more efficient one, and has created so much calamity, so many problems, really so much misery: seminaries closed, convents closed, liturgy trivialized….And the true Council had difficulty in becoming concrete, in realizing itself; the virtual Council was stronger than the real Council.”
(Citation is from http://chiesa.espresso.republic.it/articolo/1350435?eng=y, but does not work. The above is quoted directly from Rev. Matthew L. Lamb, “Vatican II After Fifty Years: The Virtual Council versus the Real Council,” The Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly, Fall/Winter 2012 including early 2013).
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre refused to sign the document on religious liberty and Guadiem et Spes; the council was corrupted from within, with the media council managed from inside the council chamber by Cardinal Villot, who supplied lots of scandal to his fellow freemason running the French Newspaper LaCroix. (Information published from an interview in Catholic Catechism of the Crisis in the Church by Abbe Matthias Gaudron). This all helped their French Grande Orient lodge forment the phallic revolution of May ’68.
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre refused to sign the document on religious liberty and Guadiem et Spes; the council was corrupted from within, with the media council managed from inside the council chamber by Cardinal Villot, who supplied lots of scandal to his fellow freemason running the French Newspaper LaCroix. (Information published from an interview in Catholic Catechism of the Crisis in the Church by Abbe Matthias Gaudron). This all helped their French Grande Orient lodge forment the phallic revolution of May ’68. Cardinal Villot was a Luciferian Freemason.
Thanks for this prophetic contribution. What would it take to get those at the Vatican to read it let alone respond to it?
What will church history make of this? It will probably be condemned as a huge waste of time, resources and money and have nothing to show. It is an exercise in confusion that would make the Charge of the Light Brigade seem as a sensible military decision!
I wish they’d all just go home and resume their quiet lives of anonymity. They should return to worshipping God, frequenting the Sacraments (especially Confession), aspire to lives of holiness and proclaim the Gospel as Jesus exhorted all of us. As for Francis, since he is coming to a close of his pontificate, he needs to step back and take a fearless moral inventory of the impact his papacy has had on the Church and seek to restore unity to the Body which has been dreadfully fractured by actions he’s taken and things he’s spoken. This is best done by frequent meetings with a Spiritual Director – someone specifically chosen who won’t tell him what he wants to hear but, rather, what he needs to hear. In this last regard, I think the emeritus bishop of Tyler TX is well-suited for the role.
Mr. Beaulieu above – Thanks for the passage from Pope Benedict.
It about sums up my experience of the Church in the last 59 years.
Some of us do not have a forum to express ourselves. Synod on Synodality has been the Protestant approach and we have seem how their churches scrambled within 500 years. This will certainly break the church: Even when we were given questionnaire at the level of parish, I sensed there was unclear motive.This is not the Pope’s ideas, some evil power has cropped in which needs prayer. But God helps those who help themselves – you ask for help but you run, then God will help you run faster to defeat the enemy. We read what is happening in Vatican, but out hands are tied. Can some Cardinal or Bishop or someone able to see the Pope tell him that this path is evil and has already failed the Protestants.
“This is not the Pope’s ideas…”
The Synod on Synodality surely is his idea. How can you conclude otherwise, considering he called it, etc.?
Dr OJ, you suggest somone tell the Pope that this (synodal) path is evil and has already failed the Protestants.
May I suggest that is precisely why the Pope via Cardinal C6 Marx chose it? The objective is clear to anyone who has understood the Church Institution is occupied by anti-Catholic forces. (There is no other rational explanation for the terrible destruction 1962-1965 and then the fall out.)
Francis is the culmination of currents of dissent from Catholic orthodoxy that has characterized the whole post VII era. Except for some erroneous heterodox sentiments implied in various sentences, the documents of VII were orthodox but invited an unwarranted optimistic faith in the trajectory of contemporary history, which led to a great deal of junk theology and liturgical free-for-alls. Many clerics and prelates were captivated by bad theology, but few ever believed a distorted mind could ever rise to the top and raise havoc. Not only through his own foolishness, but in resurrecting dissidents of the past, Francis’ actions serve as a rebuke to the confident loyal Catholics who baselessly assumed the era of dissent died in the seventies. Human vanity never dies.
From what can be gathered from remarks here by theologian Myriam Wijlens and exchange between Raymond Arroyo and Robert Royal, Arroyo having access to some related documentation – the major impact on the Church will be governance. The implementation of permanent parish and or Diocesan councils.
What is of interest are regional councils with a larger share of independent authority. It appears to be a restructuring of Ecclesial governance more localized and horizontal rather than leading vertically to the Roman pontiff. Some theologians perceive a beneficial return to the early conciliar Church, although the early Church trended toward consolidation centered in the papacy. Especially when doctrinal issues on the nature of Christ came to fore.
From this writer’s perspective, after 2000 years of defining doctrine the purpose apparently is to implement a variegated approach to not simply regionally interpreting doctrine but inclusive of new rules or disbandment of doctrine. A restructure of a Church unified in name only. An ironic reproduction of the person whose Catholicism is limited to name. We might add, relevant to Peter Beaulieu’s quote of Benedict XVI upon resignation of the papacy, “These were those [the media and clergy] who were seeking the decentralization of the Church, power for the bishops and then, through the expression ‘people of God” the final success of Luther’s Reformation.
A major problem was created years ago when the local parishes started writing their own Mission Statements. The result was total CHAOS (compete disorder and confusion) and misguided Roles and Activities.