Pope picks moderates to promote life vision
Bishop of Dallas chosen to head merger of Vatican departments
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has outlined his vision for how the Vatican will promote family and life issues, naming an American moderate to head the new Vatican office for families and laity and directing related institutes to give merciful care to spiritually wounded Catholics.
The appointment makes Dallas Bishop Kevin Farrell, a former Legion of Christ priest whose brother is also a top Vatican official, the highestranking American at the Holy See.
Francis appointed Irish-born Farrell this week as he formally created the new Dicastery for the Laity, Families and Life, which combines several Vatican offices into one.
Francis also named an Italian moderate, Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, to head two academic institutes affiliated with the new laity office — one dealing with bioethics, the other with marriage — and told Paglia he should focus on promoting the merciful side of church doctrine.
The appointments signal a more moderate direction for Vatican offices responsible for hot-button, culture-war issues such as abortion, contraception, marriage and divorce.
Farrell is known as a moderate with a warm, friendly approach that balances a strong emphasis on social justice with a defence of church teaching on issues such as abortion.
Paglia was responsible for investigating and pushing through the beatification of slain El Salvador Archbishop Oscar Romero over opposition from Latin American conservatives who accused Romero of Marxist sympathies.
The two institutes Paglia now heads — the Pontifical Academy for Life and the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family —were created during the pontificate of the conservative Polish pope to assert church doctrine on core sexual morals, bioethics and marriage. The institutes’ members were often hardliners and their conferences often featured only like-minded academics.
In a letter to Paglia, Francis said he wanted the institutes to focus on imbuing church teaching on life and marriage issues with mercy, opening dialogue with other academic and scientific centres, Christian and not.
“Bowing before the wounds of mankind, to understand them, treat them and heal them is the job of a church that believes in the light and strength of the resurrected Christ, able to go even to places of tension and conflict like a field hospital,” Francis wrote to Paglia.
Farrell’s new office is expected to work in tandem with Paglia’s institutes and will include many lay Catholics in top positions. That is part of the pope’s aim to reinvigorate the participation of ordinary Catholics in the church and get away from what he has long criticized as an overly “clericalized” hierarchy.
At a news conference in Dallas, Farrell said above all he will promote the pope’s desire to ensure that lay people are an integral part of the church. “I have always had in mind that in the church, lay people needed to play an important role,” Farrell said.
The tweeting and blogging 68-year-old bishop said he will bring his department’s work “into the age of technology and make it a little more userfriendly.”
The statutes of Farrell’s office, released in June, say it will have three sections — laity, family and life. The life section is designed to co-ordinate initiatives promoting “responsible procreation” and supporting initiatives to help women choose alternatives to abortion.
In a statement on the Dallas diocesan website — written in both English and Spanish in a reflection of Farrell’s predominantly Latino flock — the bishop said he was humbled by the unexpected appointment and would leave his home of 10 years with mixed emotions.
Farrell said he looked forward to defending life and promoting the laity and family in accordance with Francis’s recent teaching document on family life, The Joy of Love. The document has opened the door for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion.
Farrell has defended Francis’s emphasis on mercy over divisive social issues in the face of criticism from some American conservatives who dismiss the pope as confusing and insufficiently faithful.
Farrell seems very much on message with Francis on some key issues. He has spoken out on the rights of immigrants, including writing in 2010 on his blog that “immigration reform is a moral issue.”
He drew the ire of many Texas conservatives when he praised U.S. President Barack Obama’s executive action this year tightening gun regulations. Farrell, writing on his blog, criticized a new open-carry state gun law as a sad reflection of “the cowboy mentality.”
When the U.S. Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal nationwide last year, Farrell wrote that the church would never accept gay marriage, but also emphasized that homosexuals and lesbians should be treated with respect and compassion. Both positions are in line with Francis and church teaching. “We don’t all have to agree with each other. We just have to treat each other with respect and build bridges,” Farrell said this week.