Greg Daly
Pope’s advisor insists shift in attitude is real
Pope Francis’ reform agenda is unstoppable, according to one of his key advisers.
Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who is a member of the ‘C9’, the council of nine advisers hand-picked by Pope Francis to advise him on the direction and reform of the Church, acknowledged that there are opponents of reform in the Roman curia, but dismissed any hopes they might have of reversing Francis’ reforms after his papacy ends.
“I don’t doubt that there are people like that,” the cardinal said in an RTÉ interview, “but I think that they’re naïve to think that the direction that Pope Francis is setting for the Church is not something that has the momentum that will carry it on beyond the end of his pontificate,” he said.
The cardinal rejected suggestions that the transferral of responsibility for administering Vatican property from Cardinal George Pell’s Secretariat of the Economy to the largely Italian-run Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See is a setback for financial reform in Rome.
Balances
“The commissions that have been set up with the lay experts will have oversight in these things,” he said, continuing, “we’ve been very careful to recommend that there not ever be one person that’s in charge of things, but rather that there’d be checks and balances, and more than one set of eyes looking at every transaction.”
Commenting on Pope Francis’ plans to tackle episcopal child protection failures, Cardinal O’Malley maintained that differences between the proposal suggested by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which he heads, and that of the Pope did not signify a lack of commitment to battling abuse.
“The idea that the Holy Father has brought forth in many ways will be superior to what we had in mind, because it will be a quicker process and there’ll be no appeals,” he said, “because it will be the Holy Father signing off at the end with a group of experts who will be advising him.”
“It’s not something that we thought of,” he continued, “but the intention of this is the same that we are concerned about, and that is that bishops be held accountable for the welfare of children in their dioceses.”