VATICAN CITY
Crux
By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor November 6, 2014
Because Pope Francis is perceived as a maverick, almost everything he says or does is taken as a break with the past even when it clearly isn’t. His rhetoric on the economy, for instance, or his recent comments on evolution, are both utterly consistent with established papal teaching, and yet both have been trumpeted as groundbreaking.
There’s at least one case, however, in which the exact opposite is true – something revolutionary actually is happening, but is rarely perceived as the complete earthquake it actually represents.
It’s the financial reform of the Vatican, launched by Francis and spearheaded by Australian Cardinal George Pell, whose audacious aim is to convert the Vatican from a cautionary tale when it comes to money management into a role model of best practices.
That campaign took another step forward yesterday with release of a new handbook for all Vatican departments prepared by Pell’s Secretariat of the Economy and approved in forma specifica by the pope Oct. 24, meaning it has his personal blessing.
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