VATICAN CITY
Crux
By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor February 24, 2015
Any day now, Pope Francis is expected to issue a new legal framework for three financial oversight bodies in the Vatican he created last year:
* A 15-member Council for the Economy, composed of cardinals and laity, which is responsible for overall policy;
* The Secretariat for the Economy, responsible for day-to-day management;
* An independent Auditor General, designed to keep everyone honest.
Strictly from a political point of view, the decision will be taken by many observers in Rome as a thumbs up or thumbs down for Australian Cardinal George Pell, who took the Vatican by storm a year ago as the pope’s chosen financial reformer and who has played to mixed reviews ever since.
For fans, including a wide cross-section of fellow cardinals who recently gathered in Rome to receive a progress report, the 73-year-old Pell is just what the doctor ordered: a tough, no-nonsense administrator capable of bulldozing through established patterns of doing business and ushering in a new era of transparency and accountability.
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