Another week, another dicastery. Today, Pope Francis announced the upcoming merger of four Pontifical Councils into one new Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. Quite the impressive title, and in today’s world it’s mandate should be equally impressive. The Apostolic Letter Humanam progressionem, which announced the establishment of the dicastery today, summarised it as follows: “This Dicastery will be competent particularly in issues regarding migrants, those in need, the sick, the excluded and marginalized, the imprisoned and the unemployed, as well as victims of armed conflict, natural disasters, and all forms of slavery and torture.”
The new dicastery – once again neither a Congregation nor as Pontifical Council – will take over and combine the mandates of four separate Pontifical Councils from 1 January 2017. These are the Pontifical Councils for Justice and Peace, “Cor Unum“, for Pastoral Care for Migrants and Intinerant People and for Health Care Workers. Judging from this, the dicastery will not only have responsibility for people in need, but also for those who try to help them: aid workers, disaster relief personnel, hospital staff and the like.
The new dicastery will be led by a Curia veteran, Cardinal Peter Turkson, today the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. A secretary and possibly an undersecretary are forthcoming. Cardinal Turkson has been working in Rome since 2009. Before that, he was archbishop of Cape Coast in Ghana.
The mergers have little effect on the presidents of the other Pontifical Councils set to be suppressed in the new year. “Cor Unum” has been without a president since Cardinal Robert Sarah was appointed as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 2014; Cardinal Antonio Vegliò of Migrants is 78 and will therefore enter retirement; and Health Care Workers has also been without a president since Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski died in July of this year.
With this new dicastery, as well as the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life established earlier this month, the Roman Curia is slowly changing its appearance. Previously largely made up of Congregations and Pontifical Councils, with the Secretariat of State at the top (and rounded out with several smaller offices as well as the three canon law tribunals), a new structure is now emerging. There are now three secretariats: of State, for the Economy and for Communications, but these do differ greatly in mandate and influence. The nine Congregations remain unchanged, while the Pontifical Councils decrease in number from twelve to five. New is the category of the dicastery, which is a general term denoting a department of the Curia. Exactly where these fit in the structure of the Curia remains to be seen. They are led by prefects, one of whom is a cardinal and the other a bishop, but are not called Congregations, which are what prefects normally head. Neither are they Pontifical Councils, which is what they were formed out of.
On the day of the announcement of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, its prospective prefect was in the Netherlands, speaking at the Christian Social Congress in Doorn, east of Utrecht. His talk is available online. In it, Cardinal Turkson describes via quotes from Gaudium et Spes how the involvement of Christians in the world is a necessary condition of the Christian life, which is, ultimately, why the new dicastery exists:
“The pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world, Gaudium et spes, opens with a resounding embrace of the lived realities of humankind: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men and women of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ” (GS §1). And to truly follow Christ, we must accept our “earthly responsibilities”. The followers of Christ understand that their faith is incarnated in the world: “by the faith itself they are more obliged than ever to measure up to these duties, each according to his proper vocation.” Conversely, it is entirely erroneous for people to “imagine they can plunge themselves into earthly affairs in such a way as to imply that these are altogether divorced from the religious life” (GS §43.1). The only true path is that which unites faith and action.”
Integral human development is not only something that we should strive for for ourselves, but for humanity as a whole, especially for those who need it most, “those in need, the sick, the excluded and marginalized, the imprisoned and the unemployed, as well as victims of armed conflict, natural disasters, and all forms of slavery and torture”.
There are persistent rumours that the reforms of the Roman Curia will soon enter a new phase as several councils will be merged into two congregations. And the preliminary steps for the new phase have already been taken in recent months.
Cardinal Sarah and Bishop Toso have been reassigned, but that leaves several other prelates without a clear place to go. For now at least. Candidates for the position of Prefect of the new congregation would, in my opinion, be Cardinal Peter Turkson (pictured), who now heads the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, or possibly Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, who is now the president of the Health Care council. Both are about the same age (Turkson is 66, Zimowski 65) and about the same number of years in the Curia behind them. The other option for both of them is a return to their native country, something that Pope Francis seems to prefer. In Ghana, Cardinal Turkson’s native country, the only vaguely likely option is a return to the Archdiocese of Cape Coast, where he was archbishop from 1992 to 2009. Cape Coast’s current Archbishop, Matthias Nketsiah, turns 75 in 2017. Not a very likely prospect, in my opinion.
In Poland, where Archbishop Zimowski (pictured) comes from, there is the enticing option of Kraków, which should become vacant very soon. Cardinal Dziwisz, the current archbishop there, turns 76 in April. Solely judging from these options, Cardinal Turkson would seem to be more likely to remain in Rome and head a new Congregation for Justice and Peace.
Again, there are two most likely candidates to head this new congregation: Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko (pictured), President of the Council for the Laity for the past twelve years; and Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Family Council. Again both are the same age (69), but Cardinal Rylko has far more Curia experience (12 as opposed to 3 years). Should Cardinal Rylko be appointed to his native Poland, there really is no other place for him to go than Kraków, and we already have the option of Archbishop Zimowski going there. Two other Polish archdiocese which will fall vacant within the next few years, Warmia and Przemysl, really don’t have the stature and history for an experienced Curial cardinal. Then again, nothing is set in stone in these matters.
Yesterday the Holy See published the list of participants in the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the family. Of course, there are the usual suspects: the heads of the Roman Curia departments, the standing members of the Synod and the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences, with the latter being default participants in an Extraordinary General Synod, which this one is. Pope Francis has had a personal touch in the selection of several participants; noteable among those are Cardinal Kasper, to all appearances a theologian much appreciated by the Holy Father, but also the vast majority of cardinals he created in his first consistory of last February.
From a local point of view it is interesting to see that no less than four participants come from Belgium, while there is only a single one from the Netherlands and a mere two from Germany. Belgium sends Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard,which was expected as he is the president of the Belgian bishops’ conference, but also his predecessor, Cardinal Godfried Danneels (pictured), as well as Father George Henri Ruyssen of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome. Additionaly, Metropolitan Athenagoras, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Belgium, attends as a “fraternal delegate”.
In Caelo et in Terra 