Professionalism

Pope warns against mediocrity, gossip in Vatican
Associated Press
Dec. 21, 2013

...Pope Francis warned Vatican administrators Saturday that their work can take a
downward spiral into mediocrity, gossip and bureaucratic squabbling if they
forget that theirs is a professional vocation of service to the church...

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis warned Vatican administrators Saturday that their
work can take a downward spiral into mediocrity, gossip and bureaucratic
squabbling if they forget that theirs is a professional vocation of service to the
church.

Francis made the comments in his Christmas address to the Vatican Curia, the
bureaucracy that forms the central government of the 1.2-billion strong Catholic
Church. The speech was eagerly anticipated given that Francis was elected in
March on a mandate to overhaul the antiquated and oftentimes dysfunctional
Vatican administration.

Already, heads have started to roll: Just last week, Francis reshuffled the advisory
body of the powerful Congregation for Bishops, the office that vets all the world’s
bishop nominations. He removed the archconservative American Cardinal
Raymond Burke, a key figure in the U.S. culture wars over abortion and gay
marriage, and also nixed the head of Italy’s bishops’ conference and another hard-
line Italian, Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, earlier axed as head of the Vatican office
responsible for priests.

Other changes are on the horizon: In the coming weeks Francis will name his first
batch of cardinals and in February will preside over the third summit of his “Group
of Eight” cardinal advisers, who are expected to put forward a first round of
proposals for revamping the Holy See bureaucracy.

Francis has said he wants a Vatican Curia that is more responsive to the needs of
local bishops, who have long complained of Rome’s slow or unhelpful
interventions in their work caring for souls. Francis has said he wants the church
as a whole to be less consumed with moralizing than showing mercy to the needy,
wherever they are.

Francis thanked the cardinals, bishops and priests gathered in the Clementine
Hall for the Christmas address for their work, diligence and creativity. Deviating
from his prepared text, he said “There are saints in the Curia!”

But he also reminded them that Vatican officials must display professionalism and
competence as well as holiness in their lives.

“When professionalism is lacking, there is a slow drift downwards toward
mediocrity. Dossiers become full of trite and lifeless information, and incapable of
opening up lofty perspectives,” he said. “Then too, when the attitude is no longer
one of service to the particular churches and their bishops, the structure of the
Curia turns into a ponderous, bureaucratic customs house, constantly inspecting
and questioning, hindering the working of the Holy Spirit and the growth of God’s
people.”

Francis also repeated a warning he has issued on several occasions in his
morning homilies at the Vatican hotel where he lives: an admonition against
gossiping. The secretive, closed world of the Vatican is a den of gossip, as
revealed publicly last year by the leaks of papal documents from then-Pope
Benedict XVI’s butler.

Using terminology familiar to those present, Francis called for Vatican officials to
exercise “conscientious objection to gossip.”

“Let us all be conscientious objectors, and mind you I’m not simply moralizing!
Gossip is harmful to people, our work and our surroundings.”

Much gossiping of late has been focusing on the work of the two commissions of
inquiry Francis named over the summer to advise him on reforming the troubled
Vatican bank and rationalizing the Holy See’s overall finances and administrative
structures.

Four big-name consulting firms — Promontory Financial Group, KPMG, EY and
McKinsey & Co. — have been contracted for various projects.