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Vatican reform

Is Anybody Listening? Pope Questions Reach of Vatican Comms

May 24, 2021

“I have only one concern,” Pope Francis said, although he acknowledged “there are many reasons to be concerned” about the Vatican’s communication efforts. “But it is one that I have very much to heart: How many people listen to the Radio? How many read L’Osservatore Romano?”

Huzzah! Or, what a bawdy “historical” drama can teach us about Church reform

March 03, 2021

To change domestic policy, or even the course of a war, it is more important to amuse the monarch than inform him, and an insinuation will work better than an argument.

Analysis: Are legal reforms in the Vatican designed not to work?

February 28, 2021

A Vatican City criminal court heard two days of frequently gruesome testimony last week, in the trial of two clerics: 28-year-old Fr. Gabriele Martinelli and 71-year-old Fr. Enrico Radice. Martinelli, a former student at the St. Pius X minor seminary in the Vatican, is charged with sexual abuse of a junior boy when Martinelli was

Two Days of Testimony in Vatican Seminary Abuse Trial

February 25, 2021

The trial is underway in Vatican City’s criminal court, where two priests face charges: Fr. Gabriele Martinelli, 28, and Fr. Enrico Radice, 71. Martinelli, a former pupil at the Vatican’s Saint Pius X (Preseminario San Pio X) minor seminary ordained in 2017, is accused of abusing a junior pupil while he was a senior boy at the school. Radice, former rector of the institution, is accused of covering up and enabling Martinelli’s abusive behavior.

“Vatican Justice” Doesn’t Hold Water

February 21, 2021

Most of the changes are technical and procedural, and – as my friend, John Allen Jr, rightly noted – are designed to dispel or at least mitigate the impression, general among Vatican insiders, that “Vatican Justice” is heavily weighted against defendants, who are typically laymen and laywomen or clergy of the lower ranks.

Member of Pontifical Commission for Protection of Minors Calls for “Balance” of “Confidentiality, Transparency, Accountability”

February 19, 2021

Dr Myriam Wijlens, a canon law professor at the University of Erfurt and a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, told Vatican News the work of the Commission has recently focused on "balancing Confidentiality, Transparency and Accountability”.

Analysis: Pope Francis’s promotion of women a more complicated narrative than it appears

February 10, 2021

Pope Francis made some high profile appointments heading into last weekend, naming Sr. Nathalie Becquart and Fr. Luis Marín de San Martín as undersecretaries to the Synod of Bishops. Only, what does the appointment of a woman with full voting rights in the Synod really tell us about how Pope Francis governs the Church?

Vatican Reform: Big wings have been clipped, but will they grow back?

January 02, 2021

It seems it would take Solomon to figure out how to cut State down to size, but perhaps the wisest of ancient Israel’s kings has already provided a solution: Cut the baby in half.