‘C8’ cardinals meet in Rome to set reform agenda

Pope Francis has held an inaugural series of meetings with his Council of Cardinals, the group of eight men from around the world he chose last April to help advise him on governing the universal Church and reforming the Roman Curia, writes Robert Mickens.

The closed-door sessions, which took place each morning and afternoon between Tuesday and Thursday, have generated expectations among many Catholics for a major restructuring of central offices in Rome. The group’s coordinator, Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga SDB, may have further stoked those hopes last week when he told Canada’s Salt +Light Television that Pastor Bonus “is over”. This 1988 apostolic constitution was the juridical statute for the current structure and function of Roman Curia. But the cardinal said writing a new statute to replace it was “not a work of two or three months”, but much longer.

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi SJ echoed that point when he cautioned that this first gathering of the council was not likely to produce “extraordinary decisions” or even a final communiqué. He told reporters the day before the meetings began that the council would have to first “set priorities” over how to address the many issues and suggestions they have gathered in the past several months. “We’re dealing with 80-odd documents, which the council’s secretary, Bishop Marcello Semeraro, has synthesised,” the priest said. He said the documents reflected consultations the eight cardinals held in their geographical areas, plus proposals various Curia offices and the Secretariat of State sent directly to the Pope.

In Monday’s pre-meeting briefing Fr Lombardi also presented the chorograph – or legal, handwritten document – by which Pope Francis gave his advisory body, previously called merely a “group”, a more formal and institutionalised status.

“After mature reflection, I feel it opportune that this group … should be instituted as a ‘Council of Cardinals’,” writes the Pope in the document, dated 28 September.

The chorograph does not change the nature of the council. The Vatican spokesman emphatically reiterated that it remains “only consultative” and “does not have any decision-making authority”. For example, he stressed that the council could not be seen as a form of collegial governance, since the Pope was “not conditioned in any way” or obliged to use it or follow its suggestions. Rather, he called it “another instrument to enrich the governance of the Church with a new method of consultation”. 

This week’s meetings were held inside the private papal library at the Apostolic Palace. Francis was due to attend all six sessions except for Wednesday morning, when he held his weekly general audience. The working language of the meetings was Italian and the only person to attend other than the Pope and cardinals was Bishop Semeraro.