As the "C9" (the Council of Cardinals) begins its 21st meeting today Vatican Radio has posted an interview with the Secretary of the C9, Bishop Marcello Semeraro (Pope Francis and the C9: Interview with Council Secretary). The following passage from this interview is posted here, for a record of events. (Our emphases.)
Asked about the progress of the reform, Bishop Semeraro said the reform is more than three quarters done, at least with regard to the work of the Cardinals. That is, he said, it is almost to the point where the Cardinals are able to present their proposals to the Holy Father. “I think that within a few months this revision will be more or less complete,” he said, and “then the Pope will have at his disposition the proposals that regard all the Dicasteries and I would expect him to decide how and when to actuate them.” He noted that Pope Francis has preferred, up to this point, a more gradual reform, with a kind of “breaking-in” period, which allows for corrections that are inevitably called for as the reform moves from theory to practical reality.
We can be certain that the reform of the Curia, should the Lord God in His inscrutable providence allow it to be completed and put into effect, will entail the even greater weakening and loss of authority of the Congregations (soon to be merely "Dicasteries") for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CDWDS), vis-a-vis the bishops's conferences. We already saw a preview of this two days ago with regards to the CDWDS. It is highly unlikely however that Francis will stop at liturgical decentralization, when he already endorsed the very concept of the decentralization of doctrinal authority in the programmatic document of his pontificate, Evangelii Gaudium. (See our 2015 post Doctrinal "devolution" to the bishops' conferences? Francis already endorsed it in 2013.)
