Undeterred Francis affirms he will push on with reforms

Pope Francis took to the balcony of St Peter’s Square on Sunday to face down opponents of his reforms of the Roman Curia. The dramatic initiative came two days before another speech setting out his vision for church renewal at an Italian Catholic convention in Florence.

In a highly unusual move, Francis used his Sunday Angelus address to denounce the recent leaking of documents showing financial mismanagement at the heart of the Church, while stressing he was working with his advisers and the support of ordinary Catholics on a clean-up of the Vatican. “I wish to reassure you that this sad event certainly does not deter me from the reform project that we are carrying out, together with my advisers and with the support of all of you. Yes, with the support of the whole Church as the Church renews itself with prayer and the daily holiness of each baptised person.”

Last week, two books were published based on a raft of leaked documents detailing mismanagement in the Holy See that Francis encountered after his election as Pope in 2013. Two individuals – Francesca Chaouqui and Mgr Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda – have been arrested and questioned on suspicion of leaking.

They had both sat on a commission the Pope set up in 2013 to overhaul Vatican finances and administration. The books, by Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, detail a lack of co-operation by parts of the Roman Curia with that commission.

On Sunday the Pope explained: “I personally had asked for that study to be carried out and both I and my advisers were well acquainted with those documents and steps have been taken that have started to bear fruit, some of them even visible.”

Two days later in Florence, at the Fifth National Convention of the Italian Church, which takes place every 10 years and was  attended by 2,200 bishops, priests and people from each of the country’s 220 dioceses, the Pope offered his vision of church reform. “We are not living in an era of change but a change of era,” he said in a 50-minute address at the city’s cathedral.

He suggested ­Italian Catholics adopt humility, selflessness and beatitude, features which “tell us that we must not be obsessed with power” and called for a “restless Church” that looks after “the abandoned, the forgotten, the imperfect”. In a speech that was peppered with applause Francis said “reform of the Church” is a semper reformanda (always to be reformed) and “does not end in the umpteenth plan to change structures”. “It means instead grafting yourself to and rooting yourself in Christ, leaving yourself to be guided by the Spirit – so that all will be possible with genius and creativity,” he said.