Taking on the reform of what is probably the oldest administration in the world, the Roman Curia, was never going to be quick or easy. When it comes to making changes in Rome, Pope Francis has compared the exercise to cleaning the Egyptian sphinx with a toothbrush (an image he borrowed from a nineteenth-century papal diplomat from Belgium).

The Francis curial reforms have moved at what has felt like a snail’s pace, particularly given our hyper-fast age of instant results. But if the changes so far have been incremental and gradual they all point in one direction: to make the Church’s central civil service a missionary-focussed operation that serves the Pope and the churches on the ground. In crude political terms, this is a scaling down of the Curia’s power over the universal Church, taking influence away from the fiefdoms of Rome-based prelates and returning it to the local bishops toiling in the vineyards.