Pope Francis moves to develop a more decentralized church

Light of Truth

“All roads do not need to go through Rome!” – Deligne.

Everything is clear for the former president of the Argentine Bishops Conference who has become Pope. Decisions in the Church do not necessarily need to go through Rome.

“Excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church’s life and her missionary outreach,” he lamented in §32 of Evangelii gaudium, the document that is the program for his pontificate.

For several months, the C9 (the nine cardinals who advise him on the reform of the Curia) have tackled the question of Church decentralization.

During its latest meeting in mid-June, the group studied “the possibility of transferring certain faculties of the Roman dicasteries to local bishops or bishops conferences in a spirit of healthy decentralization.”

The example given then was that of permanent deacons who currently need to ask authorization from Rome to remarry if they are widowed or wish to be ordained as priests if they are widowers or celibate.

Such authorizations could eventually be given by bishops conferences and no longer by the Congregation for the Clergy.

But according to Greg Burke, director of the Holy See Press Office, this is just one of many examples of decentralization currently being considered by the C9.

“In many dicasteries, there are things of this nature that depend on Rome but which need not necessarily do so,” he explained.

The Pope’s recently published “motu proprio” on liturgical translations, Magnum principium, is typical of this desire.

As a result of John Paul II’s Liturgiam authenticam the work of liturgical translation became blocked, with the Congregation for Divine Worship responsible for verifying that the original Latin was “translated integrally and very precisely.” The outcome was that it ended up imposing its decisions on bishops conferences. By recalling that the work of “faithfully preparing the versions of the liturgical books in current languages” needs to be carried out in a “collaboration full of reciprocal, attentive and creative confidence” between the bishops conferences and Rome, Pope Francis has transformed this situation.

In the Curia, however, certain offices have seen these changes as a loss of Rome’s power to make decisions that are binding for all dioceses.

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