Francesco loves to govern and with the advance age he has always kept us to underline that to do it enough the headnot the body. The narrative that has distinguished this pontificate of “doing” is also going on in these days of hospitalization at Gemelli, with the publication of appointments, new saints, commissions established and modified Vatican laws. The information that comes from the apartment on the tenth plan of the Roman hospital underlie the daily “work activities” in which the pontiff is engaged. But Francis The Vatican has been missing from the Vatican for more than two weeks and its absence, in some way, requires more work to the Dicastery which has the tasks of greatest collaboration with the Pope: the Secretariat of State.
Renewed activism
By force of things, the task of connection between the Vatican and the Gemelli is carrying out the secretariat of state. Not surprisingly, in addition to that granted to the President of the Italian Council Giorgia Melonithe only hearing made official in these weeks of hospitalization was that granted last Monday to the cardinal secretary of state Pietro Parolin and the substitute Monsignor Edgar Peña Parra. Meeting them, the Pope authorized the dicastery of the causes of the saints to promulgate the decrees regarding some new and blessed saints, including Except for purchase. Also from the Secretariat of State, the initiative of the Rosary’s recitation in St. Peter’s Square for the healing of Francesco seems to have started. Not surprisingly, to preside over the first moment of prayer – and therefore also the most relevant at the media level – it was Cardinal Parolin.
From Santa Marta to the Apostolic Palace
In the pontificate of Bergoglio the heart of Vatican power has moved from the Apostolic Palace to Santa Martanot only for his residence but also because, in addition to the official organisms of the Curia, a certain influence in the Vatican dynamics was taken by people close to him and accustomed to attending him in the now famous hotel inside the walls. The Secretariat of State met a reduction not only unofficial, but also official with some measures such as the Praedicate evangelium and the Motu proprio About some economic-financial skills that has taken part in the management of funds and properties. Unlike what happened with John Paul II in the periods of illness, when a particular influence in the Curia was the particular secretary of Pope Stanisław Dziwisz, Bergoglio has always preferred one rotation in this role of maximum trust. This meant that to make a filter on the decisions to be made think only those in the third loggia.
The number two
That of the Secretariat of State is a complex machine to manage and it is not always said that a full one is established harmony between the secretary of state and the substitute. At his summit, in the role that was by Eugenio Pacelli, already in his first year of pontificate Francesco called the Veneto diplomat Pietro Parolinone of the few curials to have remained in the same place for more than eleven years.
Although it is capable of not exposing itself too much, the cardinal was a faithful interpreter of the line of this pontificate and he is due to some of the most impactful dossiers: first of all, the provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops with China. About a year ago, the Secretary of State publicly declared that on reforms traced by Francesco “There will be no reversal of travel.”