Vatican City - In recent years, inside the Roman Curia, there has been a succession of appointments we would never have wanted to see. We are not talking about choices that are debatable on the level of sensitivities or ideological camps, but about profiles that are objectively unfit: people placed in decisive roles without the basic requirements to sustain them, without a stature consistent with the office, without that credibility which, in the Church, is not so much something to brag about as a condition for governing.
Governing authority: an unresolved knot
The knot becomes even clearer when people try to normalise the idea that governing authority works as it does in civil organisations, regulated by management criteria and vaguely “institutional” standards. Benedict XVI, in his catechesis on the munus regendi, recalled a fundamental principle: ecclesial governance is born of a mandate and a form, not of a sociological investiture. The priest is called “to guide, with the authority of Christ, not with his own”. That line alone is enough to make clear that authority in the Church does not coincide with a modern-style delegation of power, because it remains tied to an origin and a responsibility that do not end with the man.
The Church exercises authority “not in its own right, but in the name of Jesus Christ”: this is not a devotional detail, but the very structure of ecclesial government. And in fact, when he addressed the question of hierarchy, the Pope rejected a juridical-administrative reduction and defined it for what it is: a “structure of sacramental authority” ordered according to the three degrees of the Sacrament of Orders. This is where the question of jurisdictional power connects directly: if hierarchy is sacramental, then governance cannot be thought of as a neutral function, transferable with the same logic used to assign a post in any human apparatus. Benedict made clear that the authentic meaning of hierarchy is not domination: “the true meaning… is ‘sacred origin’”. And he specified unequivocally: “this authority does not come from the man himself… it has its origin in the sacred, in the Sacrament”. If governing authority has a sacramental origin, it cannot be reduced without remainder to mere organisational skill, nor treated as a power conferred and managed according to categories alien to its nature. Nor is that all. Benedict linked this origin to a form of bond, of obedience, which prevents ecclesial governance from turning into arbitrariness or self-legitimating practice. He said it clearly even when speaking about the Pope: “the Pope… cannot do whatever he wants”. And it is precisely this twist that has prepared today’s breakdown. Francis acted as though the Pope could dispose at will of the ecclesial order; and, step by step, this approach is now surfacing also in the Sloane Avenue trial. Silere non possum said it from the outset: the Pontiff is not a legislator unbound by any constraint, but remains subject to divine law and natural law, which delimit and qualify the exercise of his power. The same principle led to Praedicate Evangelium: the centre of gravity is shifted from sacred Orders to papal appointment. In this logic, governing authority would no longer descend from the sacrament, but from the administrative act by which the Pope confers an office. It is a construction that claims to replace the sacred origin of authority with a merely decision-based, human source. This, however, does not hold. It is a false framework, and anyone who repeats it today has an elementary duty: to explain it and prove it on the terrain of sacramental theology, theology, and canon law. Formulae are not enough, nor is it enough to invoke the Apostolic Constitution: here we are touching the very architecture of authority in the Church. Benedict XVI reiterated that authority is always exercised “in responsibility before God”, and when it is separated from reference to the Transcendent it “inevitably ends up turning against man”. Presenting governing authority as a simple managerial competence means shifting the axis from the sacramental order to a functional model, with a change of paradigm that Benedict considers dangerous and, before that, theologically incoherent.
The ideology of the woman “with a peculiar outlook”
These appointments are promoted with the same ideology that, for years, has steered certain reforms of priestly formation: the idea that women would guarantee a “female outlook”, “a maternal outlook”, “a better outlook”. It is an empty thesis, useful more to justify one’s ideologies than to genuinely improve the process of appointing the successors of the Apostles or forming future presbyters. And, above all, it is the child of the very same mechanism that in the past imposed an absolute ban on women entering seminaries because they would have “led clerics into temptation”. Today the opposite manoeuvre is attempted, as if mere presence could automatically produce balance, maturation, even affection. Someone still hasn’t grasped that most of those women who are “literally launched into seminaries” are ideological women and often more embittered than the feminists marching in the streets. A seminarian, looking at these women, will learn nothing other than to hate them, nothing else. But we know it: the Church never learns from its mistakes. The frame changes, the woodworm remains intact. The idea that there exists a “female outlook” that a man, a cleric, a bishop does not possess, belongs to a Catholic imaginary that for decades insisted on a stereotyped representation of the family: the woman as naturally welcoming mother, the man as inevitably authoritative and strong father. That model, in reality, has long been worn out, when it has not disappeared altogether; and yet it survives as a conditioned reflex, capable of denying even the evidence.
You see it in the dicasteries too, where the rhetoric of the “outlook” often ends up translating into fragile criteria of evaluation, entrusted to feeling. The scene is all too familiar, and a religious recounts it without fear: “that bishop smiled at me, therefore he’s good”; “that priest is abrupt, therefore I’d never want him as a bishop”. Asked why, the answer is disarming: “he answered me badly”, “he treated me coldly”, “he didn’t listen to me”. One episode, perhaps a bad day - as we all have - becomes a verdict. In this way the criterion slides from discernment to feeling, and judgement shrinks to impression,” he explains. Then he adds: “This drift also emerges clearly when reports and letters arrive: very long texts, dense with emotions, petty score-settling, anger, resentment, with little space for facts and for their verification. It is not a trait exclusive to women, but it is a fact that they are more inclined to this kind of ‘reading of the situation’. It happens among presbyters and among religious too, yes, but to a much lesser extent.” Precisely for this reason, entrusting episcopal appointments to evaluations built “on how I feel” means handing a decisive step over to unstable criteria, easily manipulated. If the motivation is the “outlook”, the discernment body is dragged into an identity exercise. A dicastery works when it selects competences and responsibilities, not when it collects symbols.
Do we want more competent bishops, or do we want media approval?
A second point concerns the obsession, cultivated in these years, with the approval of the media and of the “little people” who look at the Church with contempt. People bring different experiences by history, role, culture, formation: not by automatic gender belonging. A dicastery does not improve “by quota”; it improves when it brings in profiles with relevant competence and a real capacity for evaluation. We, instead, have chosen to shift attention onto little news items capable of collecting likes, while the heart of the problem remains out of focus. The result is plain to see for anyone who lives the real Church. Just think of certain series of episcopal appointments - for example the many bishops from Puglia and Basilicata appointed by Francis in recent years - which, in terms of governance and relationships, are proving a disaster. A real disaster. It will be enough to ask the priests, and also the laity themselves who, at the beginning, may have applauded those choices. Leaving aside Bergoglio infatuations that did not even pass through the Dicastery, many were profiles endorsed by Dicastery members such as Raffaella Petrini, Yvonne Reungoat and Maria Lia Zervino.
Today there are whole dioceses in a state of desperation: from participation councils to parish priests in the most remote communities. There are bishops who abuse the consciences of their collaborators and stage outright power games, both with committed lay people and with their presbyters. In some places there are even dozens of presbyters ready to move elsewhere, just to escape dynamics that have become unliveable. And there are emeritus bishops treated as though they were a nuisance, humiliated despite their years in the episcopate and their age. These are the results of members chosen by ideology or friendship and not by competence. Bringing in women simply because they are women, without any specific competence, means reducing everything to pure tokenism.
The munus is not improvised
The evaluation of candidates for the episcopate concerns a munus which, by its nature, interweaves teaching, sanctifying and governing: the Code recalls that Bishops are constituted Pastors “so that they may be… teachers of doctrine, priests of sacred worship and ministers of governance” (can. 375 §1) and that with episcopal consecration they “receive… the offices of teaching and governing”, exercisable “in hierarchical communion with the Head and with the members of the College” (can. 375 §2). For this reason it is reasonable that the heart of judgement remains with those who know the episcopal ministry from within and bear collegial responsibility for it. Benedict XVI recalled that Christ willed that “the Apostolic College, today the Bishops, in communion with the Successor of Peter… should share” in the care of the People of God, and that authority is exercised “in the name of Jesus Christ”, as service. The canonical procedure confirms this architecture: consultation is “common and secret” among Bishops (can. 377 §2), the Pontifical Legate gathers the opinions of the Metropolitan and Suffragans and listens to bodies and persons, requesting “if… opportune” also the opinion of others (can. 377 §3); then the criterion remains the objective suitability required (can. 378 §1) and “the definitive judgement… belongs to the Apostolic See” (can. 378 §2).
The clergy remain unheard
Then there is a decisive point: in these years the clergy have been progressively pushed to the margins, when the priest remains the bishop’s first collaborator. The Ordinary is the one who plays a fundamental role - vital, one could say - in the life of the diocesan clergy. In these years we have seen too many prelates chasing the approval of the “people”, whom they often meet almost only at ceremonies, yet without being able to sustain a real, daily, frank relationship with presbyters. And while the life of a diocese stands on the silent ministry of the clergy, the simplest question - “who is truly suited to be a bishop?” - we no longer ask priests: we ask nuns or lay people. Why?
Presbyters are the day-to-day collaborators: they see the style of governance, the ability to delegate, the handling of conflicts, sobriety, the relationship with money, respect for persons, human balance. This is based on continuous observation, not on occasional impressions. And the Code provides precisely for listening to qualified internal feedback, through clergy figures and bodies such as consultors and the chapter. The quality of appointments is decided by the quality of information: a few motivated, specific opinions count, not an accumulation of generic, vague, made-up impressions. As we have mentioned, in the Dicastery, in these years, women were already present thanks to Ghirlanda’s outlandish normative changes: Yvonne Reungoat (office ended on 13 January 2025), Maria Lia Zervino and Raffaella Petrini. Experience, looking at the appointments that have matured in these years, has not yielded the fruits that were promised.
The critical issues with Sister Brambilla: authoritarianism
Including the Prefect of the Dicastery for Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life among the members of the Dicastery for Bishops certainly has a logic, given that not a few religious are called to the episcopate. A practice which, it is very much hoped, will diminish in the years ahead compared to past years in which Franciscan orders counted more bishops than presbyters or lay people.
But the problem remains upstream: at the head of that Dicastery, a religious woman has been placed, in effect called to preside over an area that directly touches the power of jurisdiction, which in the Church is connected to sacred Orders (can. 129 §1 CJC). In the same Dicastery there is also Sister Tiziana Merletti, and over the years – starting from the context of the Focolare Movement from which she comes – she has shown an ideological framework and a worrying lack of familiarity with canon law, for which she has nevertheless obtained qualifications. Nor should it be forgotten that in that framework Francis had inserted, without any credible design, the figure of Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime, more to “park him” than as a project in favour of consecrated life: Bergoglio first decided to promote him and then went looking for a chair to sit him on. Chairs which, moreover, are increasing today given that in Piazza Pio XII he has nothing to do.
And this in the very Dicastery that should be the most efficient, given that today religious life and monastic life are in constant crisis. It is not, first and foremost, a crisis of numbers: it is a crisis of lived charism, of recognisable identity, of concrete fidelity. In too many congregations the founder’s name and the institute’s name have become decorative labels, disconnected from what the members actually do. The peculiarities of religious families are now unknown even to the members themselves. A Consolata missionary and a Franciscan do not live different lives. And even signs become an ideological battleground, as if removing the religious habit or the veil were the achievement of who knows what freedom. Secularisation advances, and meanwhile the Dicastery does not work: a governance made up of religious inevitably moves according to belonging logics, with each one looking at their own “family” with special favour. At the head of that Dicastery there must be a cardinal of the secular clergy, to guarantee real third-party distance. The Secretary must be an archbishop who truly knows - by experience and not by hearsay - monastic life and religious life. We do not need Pro-Prefects and invented figures just to guarantee a salary. The Church is a place of service, not a marketplace for promotions. But, seriously, what can a Consolata missionary and a sister of the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor understand about the monastic life of Carmelite nuns or Carthusian monks when, every morning, they seem more focused on fixing the quiff they want to show off (one without a veil and one trying to make it peek out from under the veil) than on going down to the chapel to pray?
Beyond all this, further critical issues remain. In the Dicastery it is Sister Brambilla’s own collaborators who describe an improvised and exhausting management, marked by a climate that sharply contrasts with the public image. They say that, “behind the social-media videos and that syrupy smile performed for the camera”, there play out dynamics of petty retaliation, surly attitudes loaded with anger, and decisions dictated more by the need to reassert “who’s in charge” - up to traits of real authoritarianism - than by governance guided by paternal attention for religious men and monks. Outside the palace walls, moreover, there are various religious men and women, monks and nuns, who report a dicastery ever less oriented to its task of supporting religious life and ever more marked by an ideological imprint, with the sense of a system that protects “friends” and strikes those without contacts or internal backing. They cite, as emblematic cases, what happened with Fr Gaetani and what is attributed to the affair of Fr Mauro Giuseppe Lepori in the case of the nuns of Vittorio Veneto.
s.C.R. e Fr.I.U.
Silere non possum