A new letter to cardinals asking them to tighten their belts, help the Vatican seek new resources and exhibit an ethos of generosity marks the latest move in Pope Francis’s long-running goal of financial reform. Source: Crux.
In a letter to the College of Cardinals signed on September 16 and published Friday, Pope Francis wrote of his 10 years trying to overhaul the Roman Curia, the Vatican’s central governing bureaucracy, which culminated with the publication in 2022 of Praedicate Evangelium, which outlines the new structure and roles of Vatican departments and their officials.
“Despite the difficulties and, at times, that temptation of immobility and rigidity in the face of change, the results achieved in these years have been many,” he said, and thanked the cardinals for their role and support in his reform efforts.
The Pope said he would now like to focus on one of the topics that received the most attention in the general congregations prior to the 2013 conclave that elected him: namely, “the financial reform of the Holy See”.
“The past years have demonstrated that the requests for reform urged in the past by many members of the College of Cardinals have been far-sighted and have allowed us to acquire a greater awareness of the fact that the economic resources at the service of the mission are limited and must be managed with rigour and seriousness,” he said.
This, he said, must be done in order to ensure that “the efforts of those who have contributed to the patrimony of the Holy See are not wasted.”
For this reason, he said, “a further effort is now required from everyone so that a ‘zero deficit’ is not just a theoretical objective, but an actually achievable goal.”
Pope Francis said the Church must set an example in cost reduction, “so that our service is carried out with a spirit of essentiality, avoiding the superfluous and carefully selecting our priorities, encouraging mutual collaboration and synergies”.
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Pope’s plea to cardinals marks latest step in long-running financial reform (By Elise Ann Allen, Crux)
