Whenever the hard decisions do start coming, they may put an end to Leo XIV’s honeymoon with the media. So far, the press hasn’t caught hold of anything really big or scandalous, real or supposed.
Taken from MondayVatican by Andrea Gagliarducci.
As Pope Leo XIV passed the 100-day mark in his pontificate, reports and analysis pieces noted how quietly he has gone about things in the main, even how little governing Leo has appeared to do as yet, how he has appeared reluctant to let himself be the story, at all.
On August 13, however, Leo XIV took a first step in a process that will likely characterize the first year of his pontificate, and could have repercussions well beyond Year 1.
Though it garnered little media attention, Leo’s decision to place the Pontifical Committee for World Children’s Day within the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life cannot be considered a mere minor decision. Within the broader context of the papal in-tray, which has decisions pending on five major dicastery heads (including his successor at the Dicastery for Bishops), the rescript moving the Children’s Day committee to Laity, Family, and Life is not exactly earth-shattering.
It is, however, a powerfully telling move, not only on a symbolic level, but also as a harbinger of how Leo will govern when the time comes.
The Pontifical Committee for World Children’s Day was established by Pope Francis on November 20, 2024, as a body reporting directly to the pontiff. The Committee’s president is Father Enzo Fortunato, who had resigned in February as head of communications for St. Peter’s Basilica.
In short, the Committee was one of the many exceptions Pope Francis had established throughout his 12-year pontificate. World Children’s Day began as a one-off event, then became a regular event, and so Francis wanted to establish a committee to oversee it. But the committee he did establish was essentially a stand-alone outside the normal curial structure, reporting directly to the pope.
That wasn’t the first time Francis had created an exception, either, some of which were sometimes absorbed into other dicasteries. For example, Francis had established a Commission for Migrants and Refugees within the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, placing it ad tempus (i.e., for some time) directly under his authority. This exception was absorbed when the Pope made the Migrants commission’s undersecretary, Michael Czerny SJ, a cardinal, and later made him president of the Dicastery—which in the meantime had become the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development—all moves that effectively made migration the top priority of the “superdicastery” under Czerny.
Other exceptions have been left as they were created. There has been no Prefect of the Papal Household since Archbishop Gänswein was put on indefinite leave in 2020 and then not renewed in his position. Francis also carried out a sort of “asymmetric promotion” in many cases, like that of —the secretary of the discipline section in the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, John Joseph Kennedy, is an archbishop, while the doctrine secretary, Msgr. Armando Matteo, is not.
And then there are the papal exceptions to the Vatican trial over the management of the Secretariat of State’s funds—the so-called “Becciu trial”—in which Pope Francis intervened with four rescripts, changing the rules of the process along the way. The appeal is expected on September 22, but the Pope may first want to address the various anomalies in Vatican justice—consider that justice reform has been implemented three times in just a few years. The promoter of justice for the appeal is the same as the one for the first-instance trial, a rather unusual decision.
Broadly speaking, notable exceptions and exceptional reforms marked the whole Francis pontificate. It began with the idea of reorganizing a Curia that seemed intractable, seeking a reorganization that only a Pope from the ends of the earth could have implemented, simply because he was not tied to the history and traditions of the Roman Curia. Instead, we found ourselves faced with a Pope who did not reform so much as improvise and jerry rig. Francis did not simplify, or even streamline. Instead, he made exceptions.
Today, Leo XIV finds himself dealing with a plethora of motu proprio and decisions from Francis that he must process, absorb, or implement. In some cases, the processes continue, because it could not be otherwise. This is the case, for example, with the decree implementing the motu proprio “To Better Harmonize” of 2024, which established new rules for the awarding of public contracts.
The motu proprio resolved several issues regarding Vatican procurement law that remained unclear or needed to be streamlined and made more practical. The procurement code was necessitated by the Holy See’s accession to the Mérida Convention, which, among other things, required the establishment of an anti-corruption agency in the signatory state.
Leo XIV approved a decree defining the modalities of application of the motu proprio, following the path of his predecessor.
That was something, sure, but it was mostly a matter of approving an adjustment. Leo XIV won’t necessarily act this way for all the decisions left by his predecessor. In any case, there is a great deal of pressure on him. Several of Pope Francis’s most loyal followers have attempted to approach him by referencing his predecessor’s last wishes, despite these wishes not being documented or verifiable.
Whenever the hard decisions do start coming, they may put an end to Leo XIV’s honeymoon with the media. So far, the press hasn’t caught hold of anything really big or scandalous, real or supposed.
That’s why a decision like the one regarding the Pontifical Committee for World Children’s Day has a highly symbolic value. It’s not just about reorganizing. It’s about bringing new harmony and clarity to tough situations, of which there are a great many, indeed.
Taken from MondayVatican by Andrea Gagliarducci.
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