The Curious Background of the Pope’s ‘Fixer’, by Phil Lawler

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture, Nov 22, 2024

Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org.

With a curious appointment this week, Pope Francis has shown how much he trusts an American prelate who is now one of the most powerful men at the Vatican. What was that appointment—which to date has escaped public notice? And why has the Pontiff placed so much confidence, and so much power, in Cardinal Kevin Farrell?

Yesterday the Pope announced that the Vatican’s underfunded pension account, long a source of concern, had become an urgent problem that “can no longer be postponed.” So he named Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life, as the sole administrator of the pension fund, with authority to take the steps necessary to correct a “serious prospective imbalance.”

In his announcement the Pope indicated that experts had already studied the problems, so presumably the professional money-managers have made their recommendations. Inevitably those steps will be painful: cutting benefits somewhere and/or raising levies somewhere else. Now Cardinal Farrell has the mandate to carry out the plan, along with the authority, as sole administrator, to tailor it to fit the particular circumstances. …

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