Pope Francis’ new clothes: Why his progressive image is white smoke and mirrors

[pnwmom]

17. It is not true that he "maintains a hardline cabinet." He has made substantial changes

in the Vatican hierarchy, including putting the American Cardinal Burke out to pasture.

For example:

http://www.businessinsider.com/pope-francis-is-rattling-the-vatican-bureaucracy-by-ousting-italians-2014-3

Putting himself on what one commentator dubbed a "collision course with the Curia", the Argentine has set up several international committees. The latest, created to root out pedophilia in the Catholic Church, includes only one Italian out of eight.

The same is true of a body that he set up in April last year, just one month into his papacy, to advise him on reforming the Curia -- his council of cardinals, nicknamed the G8.

Foreign cardinals have been awarded prestigious posts, from the Australian George Pell -- head of the new economy ministry -- to Germany's Reinhard Marx, who leads up a council tasked with overseeing the Vatican's economic management.

Marx is assisted by Britain's Brian Ferme and Alfred Xuereb of Malta -- who doubles as the pope's very influential private secretary.

"By entrusting delicate government tasks to hierarchies that are made up mainly of non-Italians who are not resident in Rome, the pope is putting himself on a collision course with the Curia's traditional power," editorialist Ernesto Galli Della Loggia wrote in Italy's leading daily Corriere della Sera.


SNIP