VATICAN CITY
Religion News Service
By Josephine McKenna
VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican’s top doctrinal official, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, has rejected suggestions from a clergy abuse victim that Pope Francis is facing critical internal resistance from foes of his efforts to overhaul the church’s central administration.
Mueller, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a key department of the Roman Curia, made his remarks in an interview with an Italian daily on Sunday (March 5) after Irish sex abuse survivor Marie Collins cited opposition from Mueller’s office as the main reason for her resignation last week from the pope’s commission to protect minors.
The interview in Corriere Della Sera was published as the pope joined members of the curia on a Lenten spiritual retreat in the town of Ariccia outside Rome.
“I think you should put an end to this cliché’, the idea that there is on the one hand the Pope who wants reform and on the other a group of resistors who would like to block it,” the conservative German cardinal said.
“It is part of our Catholic faith and the work ethos of the Roman Curia to support the Pope’s universal mission, entrusted to him by Jesus Christ. ”
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