
Pope Francis, background center, celebrates a Mass for the word of God in St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2020. (Credit: Gregorio Borgia/AP)
Pope Francis, background center, celebrates a Mass for the word of God in St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2020. (Credit: Gregorio Borgia/AP)
ROME – Though it’s impolitic to say so out loud, probably no institutions on earth are benefitting more from the coronavirus panic right now than manufacturers and retailers of hand sanitizers, medical masks, facial tissues, and so on. Costco just reported a 3 percent sales spike in February alone due to off-the-chart demand for such products.
A close second in terms of a coronavirus bump, however, might well be the Vatican.
For one thing, the Vatican was recently on the verge of a full-blown health scare around Pope Francis, as he cancelled a series of events due to what’s been described as just a “light cold.” Under normal circumstances, such reassurances would only hold for so long. Now, however, the Vatican can cancel or curtail as many papal events as it wants, and no one will bat an eye.
Perhaps even more telling, the Vatican just committed one of the most flabbergasting PR gaffes in recent memory – which, by the way, is saying a fair bit – yet due to the coronoavirus, so far it’s been virtually ignored.
Here’s what happened.
In its Friday daily news bulletin, the Vatican hailed the creation of a new “General Directorate for Personnel” within the general affairs section of the Secretariat of State, responsible for internal ecclesiastical governance, describing the new office as “a step of great importance in the path of reform initiated by Pope Francis.”
“This new directorate will be presided over by a director, who will have strategic, inspective and operative power, with functions of coordination, oversight and vigilance; the office, moreover, also will be equipped to be able to respond, in a timely fashion, to the various requests it will be called to carry out,” the statement said.
Yet the very next day – 25 and a half hours later, to be precise – the Vatican announced in a separate statement that, whoops, there actually is no new directorate after all.
“To be precise, at the actual state of things it’s a proposal advanced to the Holy Father by Cardinal Reinhard Marx, President of the Council for the Economy, and Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, President of the Council of Cardinals, to institute such a structure,” the statement said.
“The Holy Father will study the proposal, and, if he thinks it’s opportune, at the right time he’ll institute the structure in the way he decides with a Motu Proprio,” it said.
Really, the Vatican could have saved itself the grief and just put out one consolidated statement as follows: “Right now we’re in disarray, rife with power struggles, and one of the things we’re fighting over is control of human resources.”
Because make no mistake, that’s precisely what the flip-flop on a “General Directorate for Personnel” reveals.
In effect, this new directorate amounts to what, in virtually any other context, would be called an HR office. Its creation has been backed for some time by reform-minded people inside the system who know three things to be true:
All three are the kinds of things a serious HR office would be tasked with handling.
Naturally, the original Vatican statement didn’t spell any of that out, but insiders knew what it meant – and, consequently, they understood that the creation of such an office was a potential game-changer. That likely explains the internal backlash that led to a decision to back-track.
Moreover, it’s entirely possible that making such a consequential decision in a period in which the entire Roman Curia was away on retreat, in which the pope himself has been sick and only halfway engaged, and in which the coronavirus scare has people preoccupied, amounted to a bridge too far.
In any event, for now this “step of great importance” in the pope’s efforts at Vatican reform is dead on arrival. Time will tell if Francis decides to bring it back to life – in other words, if an HR Easter follows what can only be described as its consignment to the tomb.
Follow John Allen on Twitter: @JohnLAllenJr
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