VATICAN CITY -- Just days after closing a contentious meeting of bishops from around the world, Pope Francis turned his attention Tuesday to more domestic but equally contentious affairs.
He issued a stern warning to Vatican bureaucrats to obey Vatican rules and laws as he goes about overhauling the Vatican administration -- a sign that those charged with enacting the reforms perhaps need some reform themselves.
Francis penned an unusual letter to the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, asking him to remind Curia leaders that they must observe Vatican law about the structure and powers of the existing administration and follow existing rules on new hires, transfers and salary caps.
According to the current law, Parolin's office is at the top of the Vatican hierarchy and is in charge of human resources. He imposed a hiring freeze last year.
One target of Francis' letter could be the new Secretariat for the Economy, headed by the Australian Cardinal George Pell, who has moved aggressively to try to assert authority over other Vatican entities and their finances as he builds up a new office from scratch. The Vatican in June also named a new auditor general.
Separately, Francis created a secretariat for communications, to gather together all the Vatican's varied media entities under one administrative roof, and also announced he would merge three Vatican offices, on the family, laity and a bioethics think-tank , into a single department.
On another front in his reform agenda, Francis on Tuesday filled two key openings in the Italian church, naming pastors to the important archdioceses of Bologna and Palermo, Sicily. The nomination of new Bologna Archbishop Matteo Zuppi, who has long been associated with the charity-minded Sant'Egidio Community, was particularly noteworthy given he replaces the retiring arch-conservative Cardinal Carlo Caffarra.
