ROME
Yahoo! News
Catherine MARCIANO
AFP News
March 11, 2017
Elected in 2013 with a brief to reform a scandal-hit Vatican, Pope Francis has launched numerous initiatives but, four years later, he is still struggling to deliver real change.
As he celebrates his fourth anniversary at the head of the Catholic Church on Monday, the affable Argentine continues to bask in a remarkable level of popularity around the world thanks to his popular touch, plain speaking and his humble, modest style.
But inside the Vatican Curia there is not always the same enthusiasm for a pope who has regularly lambasted the administration that runs the global church. …
The sensitive issue of clerical sex crimes illustrated this double difficulty last week when Irish abuse survivor Marie Collins resigned from the pope’s advisory panel on the issue blaming “shameful” obstruction from within the Curia.
But some Vatican insiders say depictions of a kind of civil war in the upper echelons of the Church are wide of the mark.
“We need to get rid of this cliched idea of a reforming pope on one side and a group trying to block him on the other,” said German cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Muller, the head of the department targeted by Collins’ criticism.
“This simplistic idea of a good pope and a wicked Curia is dangerous for the pontiff because it can leave him isolated,” said Gianni Valente, of the specialist review Vatican Insider.
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