Vatican City - Before long, the Prelature of Pompeii may find itself shedding its last bitter tears. In the Vatican, by contrast, someone may finally be able to breathe a sigh of relief.
In recent years, the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints has gone through one of the murkiest periods in its history. Not coincidentally, much of what has happened bears the mark of Francis’s pontificate. It is a complex and exceptionally sensitive institution: not only because of the matters with which it deals, but also because of the interests, connections and pressures that inevitably surround one of the Holy See’s most delicate bodies.
The Dicastery oversees a substantial flow of financial resources connected with the handling of causes for sainthood. This money is used to gather documentation, obtain medical and historical expert assessments, commission specialist advice and analysis, and meet every requirement necessary to support a beatification or canonisation process. This is an area in which seriousness, competence and transparency should be non-negotiable.
Pope Francis, however, came to treat the Dicastery as a kind of holding pen. He placed Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu there after removing him from the Secretariat of State. Then, when he decided to show him no mercy either, he entrusted the office to a man whom he trusted absolutely: Marcello Semeraro.
A prefect with no relevant expertise
The problem with Semeraro, who comes from Monteroni di Lecce, is that throughout his ecclesiastical career he has done little more than look for networks on which to cling. The very same “social climbers” of whom Bergoglio often spoke, only to surround himself with them with an almost methodical regularity. Semeraro secured his appointment as a bishop during the pontificate of John Paul II. He had already established ties with Jorge Mario Bergoglio before the latter’s election to the See of Peter. When the Jesuit became Pope, he immediately appointed him secretary of the Council of Cardinals, placing him in a sensitive and highly significant position.
