As is often the case, we need to go back in time to understand why the Congregation for Catholic Education manages seminars.  In the 19^th century, after the French Revolution, the Church was on the defensive, as revolutionary movements wanted religion set aside, in the name of the principle of laity.  In Italy, the Church was depicted as a hurdle to the unification of the country.  It is well known that all of the main characters of the Italian Risorgimento were masons and anti-clericals.  Their task was not only to sweep away the Pontifical State.  They wanted to put the moral teachings of the Church aside, in order to have the cultural influence of the Church –the only truly unified cultural institution in Italy– wither away.  They were all cognizant of the Church’s cultural supremacy.  Everybody studied in the schools managed by priests, since they were universally considered the best schools in Italy.

A battle fought with culture

So, besieged, the Church decided to fight this battle armed with one of its best weapons: culture.  Thus, seminars were put under the administration of the Congregation for Catholic Education.   Marginalized and with no properties to rely on (since the properties of monasteries had been taken away by states), Catholic priests were trained to use culture to face hurdles.  True, Catholics were excluded from public life, or they were just marginally part of it.  But where it was a matter of culture, skills, and reasoning, they had to be prepared to be front and center.  This approach was not only crucial in helping the Church survive, it was also the thrust for Catholic-inspired political movements.  It was also the laboratory where the Social Doctrine of the Church grew, from the starting point of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum.  It was, ultimately, the path the Church laid to respond to the challenges of the time, thus preparing it to the great renewal of the Second Vatican Council.

Today, the Church seems to be moving backwards. Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, fought hard to have the seminaries placed under his dicastery.  In a 15 page dossier, he maintained that spirituality had gone missing in seminaries, and that his Congregation was the best suited to bring them back to a more spiritual path.  The Congregation for Catholic Education has thus been deprived of one of the reasons for its own being.  Now, the challenge of culture lies just with Pontifical Universities, and no longer pertains to seminaries. The Church risks retreating to the sacristies, and having no cultural impact on the public arena.

A Pontificate under internal attack?

Is this what Benedict XVI really wants?  If we look at his Pontificate, he always talked about the importance of the role of religion in society. He spoke several times about “positive laity”, he asked for a new generation of Catholic-inspired politicians in diverse occasions, he also warned from relegating faith to the private life. So why did he accept cardinal Piacenza issues? Why was he not aware of the risks – in terms of cultural impact – of his final decision? The first impression – now that the first trial on Vatileaks has come to an end, and the second one is beginning – is that we are dealing with a Pope not able to manage the Curia, or – worse – to a blackmailed Papacy.

A two-speed Pontificate

Let us look at his Pontificate.  Benedict XVI seems to be a two-speed Pope.  He is not clericalist, nor is his staff.  The Pope was educated in German Schools of Theology –in state-run, not pontifical, universities– where the cultural debate is strong and where there is no clericalism.  As soon as he was elected Pope, he pushes for changes.  One of his first decisions was the promotion (a promoveatur ut amoveatur, promote to remove, decision) of Leonardo Sandri.  Sandri was the number two of the former Secretary of State Angelo Sodano. Benedict XVI created him cardinal and appointed him Prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches.  Then, the Pope promulgated the decree that changed the admission criteria for seminaries, and made the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (whose number one, Fitzgerald, was appointed nuncio to Egypt) a department of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Finally, he began to search for a new Secretary of State to take the place of Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who would have never been loyal to the Pope.

This activism brought on problems.  At first, Sodano tried –through the then Papal nuncio to Italy, Paolo Romeo, now archbishop of Palermo– to “direct” the appointment of the successor of Cardinal Camillo Ruini as President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference.  When this maneuver failed, Sodano began to resort to news leaks to favor the selection of a person close to him for this same position.  Benedict XVI then took an unprecedented decision: he announced the name of his new Secretary of State (Card. Tarcisio Bertone), but allows Sodano to remain at his post for another three months.  A tactical error.

In three months, Sodano was able to push for the appointment of the new director of the Holy See Press Office, replacing the hated Joaquin Navarro-Valls with father Federico Lombardi; he reinstituted the figure of the Prelate in the ranks of the IOR (the Vatican’s Trust Fund), appointing his loyal Piero Pioppo to the post; and, finally, he didn’t move a finger to avoid the media disaster arising from the Pope’s lectio magistralis in Regensburg.  Unluckily for Sodano, this controversy turned into an unexpected success for Benedict XVI, who used it to restart a seemingly moribund dialogue with Islam.  Nevertheless, what happened in Regensburg was a warning: Benedict XVI could be lead into trouble anytime.

That there was trouble on the horizon, anyway, was evident from the very Conclave that elected Benedict XVI pope.  According to credible reports, even when it was clear that Joseph Ratzinger would be elected pope, between 20 or 30 cardinals obstinately voted against him.  In the unwritten language of the Curia, this had a specific meaning: not everybody wants you as a Pope, so beware.

Benedict XVI’s second speed comes after Regensburg.  It is a more prudent speed.  The Pope restores to its former rank the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.  As its head, the Pope appoints Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran, a skilled diplomat. To change the Curial organizational chart, Benedict XVI awaits for the right moment.  Officials of the Secretariat of State – unfriendly to Bertone – are replaced one by one when their mandates expire, and are appointed Papal nuncios. The Pope resumes his plan, intended to bring the Church back to God.  The Pope’s speeches during his trips mark a crescendo on this topic, and the Papal catechesis and homilies are precious in this same regard.  It is a hidden magisterium, since it is rarely highlighted in the media.  But it is a clear and steady magisterium.

A lack of governance

But the Pope is as close to issues of faith as he is far from the governance of the Church.  The Vatican is often about nuances, more about words than choices.  Benedict XVI did not catch these nuances (he was part of the Curia, but not an active participant in it), and neither did Bertone.  Many can influence in one way or another how the Church is governed.  Each point of view is taken into account, oblivious to the possibility that some may not be acting on good faith.  The hiring of Paolo Gabriele, the butler convicted for stealing and leaking Papal documents, is symptomatic.  The Vatileaks scandal was the contingency that has brought about the return of Benedict XVI’s adversaries – i.e. the Old Guard– to the helm.

They ably seized on the occasion.  Vatileaks was in fact, in some ways, propitiated –but not foreseen- by Benedict XVI’s enemies.  An evident sign was the decision to give the rights for the Pope’s new book on Jesus of Nazareth to Rizzoli, a lay publishing house.  The choice was promoted by elements of the Old Guard in the Curia, and no one was able to confront this decision on behalf of the protection and promotion of the Catholic “good press”.

Now, rumors about John Michael Harvey’s successor to the post of Prefect of the Pontifical Household have shed light on the return to influence and important positions of men from the old guard.  The Head of Protocol in the Secretariat of State, Msgr. Fortunatus Nwachukwu, may become Papal nuncio in Uganda, part of a change that may also include Msgr. Thevenin, who is very close to Card. Bertone.  It is the first time that Msgr. Nwachukwu is mentioned as departing, a transfer that would be a cause for concern.

Is the old guard returning to power?

This way, the old guard is in some ways returning to power.  This Church lacks management.  This Church above all lacks prophetic vision.  It suffices to read the document issued in 1986 by the Pontifical Council for Justice on international debt, which premises are still valid today, and that depicted an economic panorama just like the one we have today.  Nowadays, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace seems to be under bureaucrats rather than visionaries, its prophetic impulses diminished (as in the message for the most recent World Peace Day), and its international impact questioned.

In a system in which the bureaucracy counts more than ever, we must ask:  has the old boy’s club approach to hiring worked?  Not much.  If we take as a reference the 1986 document about debt, we discover that all who were behind it came from the Paul VI era.  And so one could conclude that John Paul II’s 27 years of pontificate were indeed years of splendor for the image of the Church, but they also were years during which the Curial machine came to a grinding halt at the hands of the various bureaucrats who believed more in facades and money than in prophecy.

A church unaware of his mission

They are the very same bureaucrats who have now taken the oversight of seminaries away from the Congregation for Catholic Education.  There is, no doubt, a cultural emergency, and the Pope always speaks about the need for a strong presence of faith in the public arena.  But the Vatican bureaucrats prefer a Church secluded in temples, and not speaking out loud in the public square. They don’t even remember that a parish priest must not only be full of faith and precise in liturgy. He must also be the social heart of his parish.  He must be theologian and pastor, well-rounded and approachable.  This fullness is what has been missing in the formation of priests.  Not even the strongest supporters of Catholic tradition –those who advocate for a return to a pre-council liturgy– have understood that they are lowering the Church’s prophetic force.  They leave religions at the mercy of states’ decisions, and they do not safeguard true religious freedom.  In fact, the Holy See is the only “religion” with a structure that is recognized in International Organizations. The only independent and sovereign religion (religions without a state to guarantee their independence depend on the states in which they are based).  The only religion that can independently fund its missions, through Propaganda Fide and the IOR.  Helping the faithful in the world – even financially– is part of the mission of the Church.  Also part of the mission of the Church is the diplomatic effort to protect religious freedom, life, and to promote social initiatives in favor of the poor and weak.  This mission seems to be forgotten.

Greg Burke is an Opus Dei numerary. Even if his career was not carried out under the Opus Dei umbrella, it is also true that Opus Dei has always been very attentive to institutional communications. For a long time, the director of the Holy See Press Office was Joaquin Navarro Valls, an Opus Dei numerary. And, thanks to Navarro Valls’ presence and experience, Opus Dei soon realized that teaching institutional communications to the Church is a must nowadays. The only dissertation paper about the vaticanisti – the journalists specialized in covering the Vatican – came out from the Holy Cross Pontifical University, the Opus Dei University in Rome. And so it was almost logic – even given the good relationships between Georg Gaenswein, secretary of the Pope, and Opus Dei, whose university had Gaenswein as a teacher – to look to Opus Dei to find a solution for the «communication crisis» of the Holy See. It is not by lobbying, but by necessity that Greg Burke, who recently became an Italian citizen and whose native language is English – a much needed value added, since aggressive articles on the Church are often written in English – has been identified as the right person to become the media advisor of the Vatican Secretariat of State.

That something has changed in the Holy See communication strategy is evident. Often, Benedict XVI has personally taken the lead in addressing a situation. We just need to look at how the Vatileaks case was managed, the week following the arrest of Paolo Gabriele, the Pope’s Butler. The statements marking a clear change in the Holy See’s communication strategy followed each other in a crescendo: first, on Tuesday, May 29 morning, Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office, asked journalists not to allow themselves to be manipulated, since many of the stories that had been published in the newspapers fell «outside reality»; on Tuesday, May 29 afternoon,  Angelo Becciu – substitute (deputy) to the Secretary of State – gave an interview to the Holy See  newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, asking journalists to reach «a higher moral standard», and criticizing partisan narratives of events; finally, on Wednesday, May 30 morning, for the first time, the Pope talked openly and clearly about the Vatileaks scandal, renewing his trust on his closest collaborators.

It was not the only change. After Paolo Gabriele’s arrest, Lombardi gave a press briefing almost daily, providing updates and setting the record straight on false stories circulating in the media. And there was more. After the IOR (the Vatican’s financial body) board of Superintendence’s no confidence vote on the board’s president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the memorandum of the meeting when the vote took place was “institutionally” leaked to the press. The IOR has maintained, for some time now, an open door policy, allowing an inside look of its work. Not long  ago, a group of ambassadors accredited to the Holy See were invited to a briefing in the Torrione Niccolò V – the IOR’s headquarters – where Paolo Cipriani, general manager, talked about transparency and the activities of the Institute. Last week, it was the turn for a selected group journalists. Standing before them, Cipriani not only outlined the activities of the Institute, but also gave an in-depth explanation about the seizure of 23 million euro transferred by the IOR from an IOR account to Credito Artigiano in 2009 and to the closing of an IOR account in a  JP Morgan branch in Milan in 2012. Cipriani also denied there was a lack of cooperation with the Italian authorities, showing a letter of the Italian police where they thanked the IOR for the speed and precision of responses to their questions – Mondayvatican had already reported about this letter some postings ago.

Even though many inside and outside the Vatican are contemptuous, Benedict XVI is moving on his path toward transparency. This Pope was not afraid to write an open letter to the bishops in the midst of the Williamson affair; to write a letter to the Catholics of Ireland in the midst of the pedophilia scandal; to personally meet the victims of priest abuses, whenever he went to visit a country where there were victims who asked for a meeting; and to start a purification process within the Church that is perhaps poorly explained, though it is true and alive.  Here, the contrast with the “Communication machine” of Joaquin Navarro Valls is most evident. In his more than twenty years as the head of the press office, Navarro proved himself to be much more than a simple means of communication. He was a spin doctor, an editor, a PR man, an investigator, an advisor, a diplomat and an ambassador for the pope.

Is yet to be seen if Greg Burke will be able to have Navarro Valls’ relation with, and influence over, the Papal apartment. Surely, working within the Secretariat of State, he will be closer to the power center, and he will should be in a good position to elaborate communication strategies. Will he be in charge of an information office of the Secretariat of State or will he just be an official inside the Apostolic Palace? And what will be the future of the Holy See Press Office? Will the appointment of Greg Burke change its role?

Some insiders predict that the Holy See Press Office will become a sort of “base”, to put into effect Burke’s strategies. The next step could be to link the Press Office to the Pontifical Council of Social Communication. This would lead to more strict accreditation norms and to a new role for the director of the Press Office: the role of a simple spokesperson.

Though his appointment has still not been officially announced (and it will probably not be, since it is just the hiring of an employee joining the Curia), Burke has already given some interviews about his new charge. Burke wants first of all to listen, think and understand what has failed in Vatican communications. From the Regensburg speech to the Vatileaks, passing through the Williamson affair and the annus horribilis (horrible year) of the pedophilia scandals (it was 2010), the institutional communications of the Holy See was always playing catch-up with the news. Now, they want to address the stories as they hit the news.

Lombardi did not succeed in keeping apace with the news, in part because he lacked the privileged relationship his predecessor had with the Papal apartment. It will surely be a hard challenge. Greg Burke loves to compare his post with that of the «media advisor» of the White House. The Holy See, however, is not the White House, and the Apostolic Palace is not the West Wing. There is a very different storyline to tell, deeply anchored in a Church that is 2000 years old. A Church that still seems unable to communicate everything that it stands for and does. For example, the most interesting part of the journalists’ visit to the IOR was when the general manager, Cipriani, spoke about his trips to personally see “the works of religion” all over the world: «I recently went to Peru – he said – and I found priests that were taking care of people in shanty towns made of mud. The Church does wonderful things all over the world, and to see what the Institute funds help to achieve gave me a better sense of my own job». This part of the story was not covered in the media. That is why Greg Burke’s has such a formidable challenge before him.

The release of the resolution is a milestone:. The era of charismatic and polarizing personalities has come to an end. A new era has taken its place. The era of a solid and clean Church. This is what the Pope wanted. One must not fool around with the institutions. One must serve the institutions. Joseph Ratzinger always followed this dictate, from the time he served as one of the expert theologians at the Second Vatican Council. Now, he is steering the Church in that direction.

There had been several signals that the charismatic personalities era had come to end. For example, the appointment of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone as Vatican Secretary of State. Bertone – a non-diplomat canonist – said from the very beginning that he aimed to be a «secretary of the Church» more than «a Secretary of State». And then, the replacement of Joaquin Navarro-Valls, director of the Holy See Press Office, better known as the «Pope’s spokesman», with Fr. Federico Lombardi, sj: Navarro-Valls allowed his job to be focused on himself as much as Lombardi has done the exact opposite.. Another “big” signal had been the appointment of cardinal Dias as prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of People. Dias’ low key style stands in contrast to that of his predecessor, Cardinal Sepe, who sought the spotlight constantly in the Osservatore Romano – the Holy See newspaper – and wherever he could get it.

Since the beginning of his Pontificate, Benedict XVI set forth several critiques against careerism. His speeches on these topics can be considered part of a long catechesis: on the one hand, the Pope explains the logic of serving the Church; on the other, time after time, Benedict XVI went on challenging and changing the Curial mindset. Less diplomacy, more gospel. Less diplomacy, more law – both Canon and international law. Because institutions are based on the law. And reflection is rooted in truth. Truth and law can be considered the pillars of Benedict XVI’s Pontificate.

There have been different interpretations of the loss of confidence in Gotti Tedeschi. Many observers –particularly the Italians– maintain that Mr. Gotti Tedeschi fell on the wrong side of the internal debate about Vatican Financial transparency. The Holy See recently amended law n. 127 for countering money laundering and the financing of terrorism, and Mr. Gotti Tedeschi had been one of the opponents of this reform. Law n. 127 calls on all the agencies to attain financial transparency. Under the former law, transparency was solely the purview of the Authority for Financial Information. With the new law, everything reverts to the Vatican Secretary of State, while making all the institutions that are under his umbrella accountable. The institutions have an incentive to respond positively, as a means to assert themselves.

This is what the IOR’s board did, when it decided to release the two- page harsh resolution on the loss of confidence in Mr.  Gotti Tedeschi. Any innuendo is swept away by the resolution. Before, the Holy See would whisper, and everybody tried to interpret the whispers. Now, Holy See sheds a spotlight on how things really went. And there is not much to add after that.

«Each of us – Carl A. Anderson, Supreme Knight of Columbus Knights, member of IOR’s board and secretary of the meeting where the decision to remove Mr. Tedeschi was taken, said – has a solid reputation, but it is difficult to project an image of transparency if there is no real transparency behind it. Gotti was not committed to the Institute, he was not focused on his job, he was not properly informed about the activities of the institution and often he did not attend meetings. We had to make a decision, and we voted to withdraw our confidence in him. We had no choice.. The image of the Institute had suffered.. Our objective is to promote transparency and to revamp the Institute’s work, something that Gotti always talked about, but never did».

There are nine stated reasons for the Board’s decision: failure to carry out basic duties incumbent upon the President; failure to remain informed of the activities of the Institute and to keep the Board informed; leaving and failing to attend meetings of the Board; lack of prudence in making comments about the Institute; failure to provide any formal explanation for the distribution of documents held by the President; dissemination of inaccurate information regarding the Institute; failure to counter  flawed media reports about the Institute; polarizing the Institute and alienating personnel; increasingly erratic personal behavior. Two of these stated reasons call into question Gotti Tedeschi reliability, in particular the one about the the distribution of documents that only he held. And so Mr. Gotti Tedeschi goes out of the scene, after only two years as president of the Board of Superintendance of the IOR.