VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter
Thomas Reese | Sep. 25, 2013
ANALYSIS
Great hopes have been placed in the eight cardinals who will arrive in Rome next week to advise the pope. Pope Francis appointed these cardinals, all but one from outside of Rome, to help him come up with a plan to reform the Vatican. Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston is the only American on the committee.
What can we expect from these cardinals, who will meet Oct. 1-3? Will it be just another Vatican meeting that accomplishes little, or will it move the church toward real reform? How can we judge whether the meeting is a success?
The typical meeting in Rome occurs behind closed doors and consists of long speeches by curial officials or their favorite “experts” with little time for discussion or questions. At the end of the meeting, a press release is issued full of quotes from church documents, pious generalizations, and assertions about how fruitful the meeting was.
I doubt Francis will put up with that standard practice. He has the typical Jesuit impatience with long, meaningless meetings. Nor does he consider meetings helpful if all they do is produce documents.
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