A House Cleaner in the Vatican?
A House Cleaner in the Vatican?
As a sign of the times to come, Francis I is also the first pope in history to choose a name that honors one of Christendom’s most important saints: Saint Francis of Assisi, a 13th century reformer who preached by setting an example for all.
As today, the Church of St. Francis’s time was very much in need of a major internal clean-up. Francis of Assisi reproached the pope in front of all his cardinals for their excessive attachment to luxury, and their banality and mundane ways. Later, Pope Innocent III would finally approve his predication and approved the founding of the Franciscan Order.
So, will Pope Francis I do as his spiritual predecessor and wage a veritable war for greater austerity inside the Church, requiring its highest authorities to set the example, both inside and outside the Church?
Will he really do something about prelates accused of improper sexual conduct, cutting them off fully and completely from the Church, and not just “transferring” them away to some quiet place hoping their immoralities and perversion will just go away, as if by magic?
Will Francis I also fully and thoroughly clean up the Vatican Bank (Institute of Religious Works) forcing it to cancel shady financial deals, reject usury-based financial income, and putting its monetary wealth to work for the poor?
Again, will he identify and weed out the truly guilty of such crimes and perversion, severing all Church ties with them?
In short, will Francis I do something none of his predecessors seems to have had the will to do over the past fifty years, which is not to sweep all this mess under the carpet, but rather cleaning the place up for real?
That all remains to be seen.
Hundreds of millions of honest Catholics the world over, including in his native Argentina, certainly hope that he will.
Others, much closer to him now, who reside inside the Vatican, however, tremble at the thought that he might actually do just that.
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