Opinion: The Vatican Needs a DOVE

The dove theologically symbolizes the Holy Spirit: He is represented either in the form of a dove (as in the theophanies at Jesus’s Baptism) or of flame (as in the first Pentecost). The Vatican certainly needs the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete who Jesus promised would be with His Church always, until the “end of the age” and the direct vision of heaven.

But the Church also needs DOVE—note I spelled it all in capitals, as in an acronym. Because I think the Church needs a “Department of Vatican Efficiency”.

The cardinals who elected Jorge Bergoglio in 2013 were said, in large part, to want a reformer to put order into the Vatican, especially operations, personnel, and finances. For all their other virtues, management was not the strongest of John Paul II’s or Benedict XVI’s suits.

And, after a dozen years, multiple motu proprios, and a nominal revamp of the Curia, most commentators would admit: neither was it Francis’s.

As the cardinals consider what the Church needs in a new Pope, it seems real and genuine permanent curial reform ought to be among the job expectations.

Can we consider a new Pope who imports with him a “DOVE?” My DOVE is not necessarily Elon Musk’s DOGE. Rather, DOVE should be a tested body of top-notch management experts–both seasoned and new (for fresh perspectives)–in operations, finance, and personnel that goes through every Vatican nook and cranny, evaluating how things have been running and how they can be improved. That doesn’t mean a nip here and a tuck there: it means thinking outside the box, including breaking the frame when it is warranted. It means not taking the organizational chart of Francis’s Praedicate evangelium as the given but being able to recommend to the eventual new pontiff new models for curial operations.

The Curia, after all, is but an instrument. The Church’s job is not to “run” things but to preach the Gospel. That is–to borrow from Ford–“Job 1.”

But jobs are done better or worse depending on the organizational mechanisms supporting that job. And that’s where management comes in. The Church has too long ignored that truth. It sometimes operates on some pious notion that “God will provide,” no matter how slipshod our spadework for the task is. Here is one place I wholly accept the Jesuit axiom, “pray as if everything depends on God [because it does]; act as if everything depends on you.” As we learn from the Parable of the Dishonest Steward (Lk 16:1-16), people become quite good at ensuring things work well when their skin is in the game.

For that reason, curial reform cannot be a “desirable” quality in the next Pope: it is also a part of his mission.

DOVE should involve clergy and laity who understand how finance works. How one raises, accounts for, invests, spends, and disburses revenue in transparently accountable (even when confidential) ways. And, in conjunction with thinking outside the box, I would welcome a pontiff who scraps the pretty sloganeering of “a poor Church of the poor,” which stinks for the really poor. Let DOVE consider how the Church in the modern world of finance and capital raises, conserves, and multiplies the funds it needs to provide it with an independent, perpetuating, and self-directed (but accountable) resource to support the Church’s mission and works, not in hand-to-mouth fashion, but in a way that provides long-term stability and the ability to plan for future expansion.

DOVE should deal with operations. How Vatican organs operate internally, what standard operating procedures are in place, how different offices with equities in an issue interact efficiently with each other to produce a common conclusion, how decisions occur in a timely fashion, and how it is all communicated to the world.

Here are some examples:

• the Rupnik trial. Cardinal Fernandez assures us he is moving with all deliberate speed to find judges to try the sexual abuse case against the ex-Jesuit. The Vatican should not have to be “looking” for judges; it should have benches in place ready to handle such matters as they arise.
• the Rupnik art. The Vatican Dicastery for Communications obstinately insists on putting Marko Rupnik “art” in everybody’s face, regardless of the prudential wisdom of that stance. Under current Roman practice, there’s plausible deniability about how much that behavior reflects “the Vatican’s” position. Should that be the case?
• Holy days. In response to Bishop Thomas Paprocki’s request, one Vatican office last fall said Mass attendance obligations follow along with date transferals of certain holy days. Post-factum, another “clarified” they don’t. Did nobody talk and confer earlier?

Finally, DOVE should deal with personnel. “Rightsizing” does not mean downsizing: it means making sure that you have the right people with the right qualifications in the right places, with the right guardrails in place to do the right job. For which they receive the right compensation, not that of members of mendicant orders, but pay and protections commensurate with their qualifications as generally recognized and insisted upon in the Magisterium of Catholic social teaching.

Let me emphasize the blend: the Gospel as reflected in Catholic social teaching and the implementation/adaptation of professional standards for international organizations generally recognized and expected of institutions with comparable reach. There is no theological dissonance between these two. Too often, in the name of appeals to “piety,” genuine accountability is defeated. Paradoxically, the honesty of genuine accountability is probably far more pious. Indeed, that kind of post-DOVE Curia may very well unleash the fire of the Holy Spirit in whole new ways.

I suspect that the DOVE I envision would terrify many in the Roman system. So be it. Nearly fifty years since John Paul II’s election, with three stranieri on the Chair of Peter, it is time the Curia professionally functioned like the international organ in support of the Church, the Pope, and its mission is supposed to be. Not like an overgrown but comfortable Italian diocesan chancery. Can we hope that the Cardinal Electors look for these qualities in papabile?