PHILIPPINES
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Juan L. Mercado
@inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer
5:56 AM | Tuesday, March 17th, 2015
“By now, one thing is clear,” writes John Allen in Boston Globe. Faced with attempts to hobble reforms, through the character assassination of his reformers, Pope Francis did not blink.
The latest case swirls around Australian Cardinal George Pell, whom Francis put in charge of straightening up the Vatican’s finances over a year ago.
Pell is a former Australian Rules Football brawler. Despite criticism against Pell, Francis issued early this month statutes for his operation. “To some extent at least, they amount to a vindication for Pell,” Allen writes.
Francis signed the statutes on Feb. 22, but these actually took effect on March 1.
Predictably, some Italian columnists dubbed it a defeat for Pell’s ambition to create a body virtually with unlimited powers over the administration of all Vatican assets.
Francis approved a legal framework for all three new financial oversight bodies that he launched last year. These are: the 15-member Council for the Economy, which sets policy; Pell’s secretariat, which implements it; and a new independent auditor general, charged with keeping everyone “on the straight and narrow.”
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