To the question, “How many people actually work in the Vatican?”, Pope John XXIII supposedly replied, “About half.” It has become part of Catholic folklore that the Curia is staffed by careerists distinguished by their incompetence and laziness, and that a sclerotic, self-serving caste deliberately frustrates the Church’s progress.
All bureaucracies reflect the society from which they are drawn. The English priests I have known who were sent there (you can’t, in fact, apply for a career in the Curia), were men of considerable talent, competence and industry. The doyen of them was Mgr Bryan Chestle, who died last week. He retired from the Papal Household in 2011 after more than 40 years of service. Few English Catholics would know his name, but he was a conduit between England, the Anglophone world and the Vatican during the reign of four popes. Had you been invited for a papal private audience, Bryan would have met you, briefed you and shown you in.
