Address
There is a need for “a simplification and streamlining of the Curia”. Pope Francis said this in his Christmas address to the Roman Curia in which he listed the guiding principles of the reform stressing the importance of “sobriety”. In this regard, Pope Francis cited the “combination or merging of Dicasteries based on their areas of competence; simplification within individual Dicasteries; the eventual suppression of offices no longer responding to contingent needs; the integration into Dicasteries or the reduction of Commissions, Academies, Committees, etc., all in view of the essential sobriety needed for a proper and authentic witness”. The Pope also stressed the “importance of personal conversion”; “pastoral concern” and “spirituality of service and communion” as an “antidote to all the venoms of vain ambition and illusory rivalry”; “a clearer organization of the offices of the Roman Curia” which is needed to “bring out the fact that each Dicastery has its own areas of competence” and “on the basis of the principle that all Dicasteries are juridically equal”; the “merging of two or more Dicasteries” as a means to give the new Dicastery “greater importance” and to improve “functioning”; the reordering of competencies specific to the various Dicasteries while respecting the “principles of subsidiarity and clear organization with regard to relations with the Secretariat of State and within” the Dicastery itself.
