VATICAN CITY
Time

By Alessandro Speciale / Rome @TIMEWorldJuly 05, 2013

On Friday, Pope Francis fast-tracked approval for the sainthood of two recent pontiffs: Pope John Paul II, who presided over the Church at the end of the Cold War, and Pope John XXIII, who held the liberalizing Second Vatican Council half a century ago. To do so, Pope Francis undercut the Vatican’s traditional bureaucracy and its complex protocols regarding the proof of miracles required to canonize saints. For the Argentine cleric, who assumed the papacy’s top role earlier this year, the move is just the latest sign of his reformist impulses.

Far removed from the realms of saints and miracles, Pope Francis, it seems, has sought to shake up some of the Vatican’s more earthly institutions. The past two weeks have been filled with drama for the Vatican Bank, a tiny organization operating from within the Vatican walls…