VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter
Christa Pongratz-Lippitt | Jan. 25, 2014
VIENNA
Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, coordinator of the Council of Cardinals, has high hopes that the council will bring the central administration of the church up to date.
“There is a lot of hope and high expectations of the commission I was appointed to lead. I am sure that Pope Francis is in favor of making the Curia more agile and easier to work with,” Rodriguez Maradiaga told KNA, the German Catholic news agency, on a visit to Germany in January.
The most important priority is to change the mentality of the Curia, Rodriguez Maradiaga said. The pope is against careerism, he said: Many priests who worked in the Curia had up to now automatically become bishops, archbishops, and even cardinals — “but that no longer corresponds to the mentality of the world church, and bishops from all over the world have voiced their displeasure. Working for the Curia is a service and not a career or a position of power,” the cardinal said.
Rodriguez Maradiaga said further important steps can be taken to make the Curia truly representative of the world church — that is, more international — and to give local bishops’ conferences greater decision-making powers. “There are many questions that do not need to be decided by the Roman Curia,” he said.
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