VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service
By Francis X. Rocca
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis wants a “poor church for the poor,” but that “doesn’t necessarily mean a church with empty coffers,” said Cardinal George Pell, “and it certainly doesn’t mean a church that is sloppy or inefficient or open to being robbed.”
A month after unveiling a “new economic framework for the Holy See,” including a host of changes to the Vatican’s financial structures, the cardinal discussed the meaning of those reforms and the challenges to their implementation in an interview with Catholic News Service.
Cardinal Pell, a former archbishop of Sydney whom the pope named in February to the new office of prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, spoke to CNS about a range of issues, including Vatican financial scandals; the need for more transparency, “checks and balances” and oversight by laypeople; efforts to internationalize the Vatican bureaucracy while reducing its overall size; and the relative importance of his own role in the church’s central administration, the Roman Curia.
The cardinal, who sits on the nine-member Council of Cardinals advising Pope Francis on reform of the Curia and governance of the universal church, also spoke more generally about what the church can learn from, and teach to, organizations in the secular world
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