The past few weeks have been awfully rough for Pope Francis, the Roman Curia, and for Church leadership generally, especially on three fronts: money, clerical abuse and leadership culture. On each, deep rot has been further exposed, coupled with a colossal messaging failure that ultimately owes itself to the apparent inability to distinguish crisis from scandal.
Money: the Holy See is bad at managing it. We knew that already, but it is a major story this time because the funds raised for the Pope’s global flagship collection – billed as a support for his charitable and missionary outreach efforts around the world – are reportedly treated as a slush fund for high-ranking Vatican types, who use it as a matter of course to make investments of questionable prudence.
