Where Curia reform comes from and where it is goingThe new law of the Roman Curia. A first reading"Praedicate Evangelium": a long-awaited reformRoberto Regoli is Professor of Contemporary Church History at the University of Rome. Pontifical Gregorian Universitywhere he directs the Department of Church History and the journal Archivum Historiae Pontificiae. He is particularly interested in the history of the Papacy, the Roman Curia and papal diplomacy in the 19th and 20th centuries and is a member of various academic and cultural bodies in Europe and the United States. He has written, edited or co-edited twenty books.
Can we say that the constitution Praedicate Evangeliumpublished a little more than a year ago, marks, from the point of view of the development of the Roman Curia, one of the key passages in a history of reforms, the fruit of a vitality of institutional processes and yet dominated by the weight and figure of the Supreme Pontiff?
- The premise may seem banal, but it is not: the Bishop of Rome does not govern alone, he has always had at his side organs that assist him, from the Synods to the Consistories and the Congregations of Cardinals. In the course of history, these bodies have changed, died or new ones have been added.
While in the first millennium the bishop of Rome ordinarily governed through the Roman Synods, with the advent of the cardinals and, consequently, of the Sacred College, the Pope governed mainly through the Consistory of Cardinals, which normally met once or twice a week. There existed in the Church what today we might call a "consistory".
Before evaluating the impact of the Praedicate Evangelium and identifying its most relevant innovations, let us focus on the reforms that have affected the Curia over the centuries, starting from the ecclesiological visions that inspired them.
- During the pontificate of Pope Sixtus V, with the constitution Immensa Aeterni Dei (January 22, 1588), the Congregations of Cardinals were created: specialized assemblies of cardinals, summoned by the pope to seek advice on matters received in Rome.
This system of government is based on the cardinalate, as corresponds to an ecclesiology of the time, which identified in some way a divine origin of the cardinalate. There are clear allusions in the bull of Sixtus V Postquam verus ille (December 3, 1586), when he establishes a parallelism between the college of apostles that assisted Christ and the college of cardinals that assists the pontiff.
With the reform of 1588, the centrality of the papacy within the ecclesial vision led to the establishment of an assimilation no longer between Peter and the bishop of Rome, on the one hand, and the college of apostles and the college of cardinals, on the other, but between the Pope and Christ, both designated as the head of the body below which were all the other members, among whom the cardinals were the noblest and most excellent.
For several centuries, the system of Congregations retained its centrality in the governance of the Church: is this the case?
- In fact, there were no significant changes until, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the cardinals were excluded from the decision-making processes to intervene only in the final phase, so that the traditional collegial action of the Curia lost its raison d'être in favor of the effectiveness of the responses to the multiple ecclesial and worldly demands.
The reform of Pius X (Sapienti consilio, June 29, 1908) aimed at centralizing the government of the Church and modernizing it at the same time. The number of Congregations was reduced from 21 to 11 and from 6 to 3 Secretariats. The role of the Secretariat of State was strengthened, the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs and the Secretariat for Briefs came under his direction, and several countries (Great Britain, Holland, the United States, Canada) formerly dependent on Propaganda fide came under his jurisdiction. A restructuring, nothing more, that does not affect in the least the system of Congregations.
Before the conciliar debate became heated, it was Paul VI who decided to remove the question of the Curia from the agenda of Vatican II, committing himself to a reform, which was effectively carried out in 1967 by means of the constitution Regimini Ecclesiae universae. What were the most significant changes?
- With Paul VI, former substitute and pro-secretary of State, a man of apparatus, with considerable ability to control the administrative machine, the role of the Secretariat of State within the Curia tended to be strengthened, insofar as its "primacy [...] over the other dicasteries" was defined: a sort of prime minister with coordinating powers.
It is a general and profound reform, based also on pastoral criteria (Promotion of the Unity of Christians, non-Christians and non-believers, Council for the Laity, Iustitia et Pax Commission). The role of a Church in dialogue with other religions and with civil society is recognized.
In addition, opportunities for collaboration between the Curia and the universal Church have increased, thanks to the more incisive internationalization of the Curia, the involvement of residential bishops as members of the Congregations and the restitution or concession to the bishops of many faculties reserved to the Holy See. To facilitate generational turnover, appointments became temporary (5 years), though renewable, for heads of dicasteries, as well as for component members, prelate secretaries and consultors.
Despite the numerous historiographical references to the fact that Paul VI's reform must be conceived within the ecclesiological framework of the Second Vatican Council, this approach does not stand up to comparison with norms and practice. Montini's reform, in fact, has a substantial monarchical approach, which even then appeared as a novelty in relation to the collegial style typical of the Roman Curia in modern and contemporary times, a novelty that had its premises in the pontificates of Pius XI and Pius XII.
The Pauline centralizing reform foresaw that the administration would be directed by a monarch, immediately below whom there was only the Secretary of State, considered an executor of papal wishes.
This can be seen in the choice of candidate for the post, which went to Cardinal Jean-Marie Villot (1905-1979), who came from the pastoral world and who seemed like a schoolboy at the side of Paul VI. This approach was also manifested in the Pope's creation of the Synod of Bishops (1965). In a way, there was a shift from consistoriality to collegiality. The Synod, an instrument of a collegiality more affective than effective (the Synod does not make decisions), did not, however, diminish the centrality of the Holy See.
With John Paul II first and Benedict XVI later, are we facing a paradigm shift, which translates into a new style and concept of government?
- The general reform of the Curia in 1988, with the Apostolic Constitution Pastor Bonus of June 29, emphasizes the pastoral aspect of the service of all the organisms, but above all it introduces some structural changes. The Secretariat of State is strengthened in its pre-eminence over the other dicasteries by being organized into two sections, General Affairs and Relations with the States.
Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio affirms that: "For the first time in history, the Roman Curia is conceived and renewed in the light of the ecclesiology of communion, which neither the Immensa, nor the Sapienti consilio, nor the Regimini itself obviously knew how to take into account, although its author warned that it would need a revision and a deepening".
This institutional self-awareness, however, does not seem to stand up to comparison with praxis, in the sense that it is a vision more declamatory than realized. Benedict XVI sets himself up as the silent executor and prosecutor of the lines of previous pontificates with a less monarchical approach than that of Montini, which seemed, as already said, a novelty in relation to the collegial style typical of the Roman Curia.
Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI preferred a different mode of government, due to their different temperaments and styles of governing: a kind of government by delegation, after having provided the broad lines of action (except in the dossiers they respectively had more to heart and followed in detail).
In this long history, whose milestones we have traversed, we find the reform of Pope Francis, which will only be effective if it is carried out with "renewed" men and not simply with "new" men," in the words of the pontiff himself. Only the future will be able to tell us about the goodness and success of the Praedicate Evangelium. In any case, what really changes?
- We could answer: nothing, a little, a lot. Nothing, because the basic structure of the Curia established by Sixtus V in 1588, composed of Tribunals, Offices, Secretariats and Congregations, is maintained. Although through creations, suppressions, reorganization of competencies, mergers, based on a pragmatic method. It changes little, insofar as the marked horizon of the reform is that of the greater involvement of the local Churches in the central administration of the Roman Curia, but this approach was already well present in the reform of Paul VI in 1967 and de facto with Pius XII the irreversible path of the internationalization of the components of the Roman Curia and the Sacred College, which is the first and real involvement of the periphery in the Roman center, had been set in motion.
It should also be noted that the structure of a Secretariat, unlike that of a Congregation or a Dicastery, is aimed at the rapid management of files. In fact, while a Congregation has by nature a collegial management, the Secretariats follow a vertical model.
On this point, it is understandable that the novelty of the two Secretariats in the first years of the pontificate concerned precisely communication and economy, areas in which a collegial method would call into question the efficacy of the responses to the demands of reality. Only in the case of communication was there finally a return to a Dicastery model, because, beyond efficiency, there was probably the need to manage a not indifferent number of related structures. As for the Secretariat of State, the competencies concerning the personnel of the Holy See and the autonomous management of finances and investments were taken away from it.
At the same time, the reform creates a Section III for the Diplomatic Staff of the Holy See, under the direction of the Secretary for Pontifical Representations, assisted by an Undersecretary, and within Section II creates a new figure, an Undersecretary dedicated to multilateral diplomacy. In a certain sense, it is a return to an earlier model of the Secretariat of State, that of the modern era. Another element of recovery of the past, in a reformist key, is the presidency of some bodies that have remained in the hands of the Holy Father, such as the Dicastery for Evangelization. In addition, one of the sections of the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development deals with the concern for refugees and immigrants. This section remains ad tempus under the direct and immediate authority of the Pontiff. Another paradigmatic decision is the elevation of the Limosneria to the Dicastery for the Service of Charity, over and above the actual impact of government. On the other hand, however, gestures are worth more than texts. The pontificate of Francis seems to follow a style of governance closer to that of Paul VI, according to a more direct involvement of the pope in the management of the dossiers.
Finally, the reform changes a lot with respect to the past, always according to a historical reading. First of all, the method. For the first time, the reform of the Curia is carried out by non-curial prelates: the well-known Council of Cardinals, in its evolution, sees only the Secretary of State sitting as a representative of the Curia. Also for the first time, the world episcopate participates. In the first pages of the constitution Praedicate Evangelium, in fact, it is explicitly stated that "The Roman Curia is at the service of the Pope [...] the work of the Roman Curia is also in organic relationship with the College of Bishops and with the individual Bishops, and also with the Episcopal Conferences and their regional and continental Unions, and the Eastern Hierarchical Structures, [...]".
And in another passage it is reiterated that the Roman Curia "is at the service of the Pope, successor of Peter, and of the Bishops, successors of the Apostles, according to the modalities proper to the nature of each".
These are, however, passages that should be read together with the very important one on the participation of the laity in the central government of the Catholic Church: "Every curial institution carries out its mission by virtue of the power received from the Roman Pontiff, in whose name it acts with vicarious power in the exercise of its munus primaziale.
For this reason, any member of the faithful can preside over a Dicastery or Organism, given his or her particular competence, power of government and function". With the clear involvement of the laity, we move from the ecclesiology of collegiality to that of synodality, where by synodal is understood not a generic "walking together", but more properly a walking together of all also in functions of government.
