(LifeSiteNews) — To address what Pope Francis has called a “serious imbalance” in the Vatican’s pension fund requiring “new and unavoidable” reforms, he has appointed U.S. Cardinal Kevin Farrell to administer the fund, which benefits retired employees of the Roman Curia and the Vatican City State.
“We are now all fully aware that urgent structural measures are needed, which can no longer be postponed, to achieve the sustainability of the Pension Fund,” wrote the Pope in a letter to the College of Cardinals this week.
“Different studies have been carried out from which it has been derived that the current pension management, taking into account the available assets, generates an important deficit,” wrote Pope Francis.
“Unfortunately, the figure that now emerges at the end of the latest in-depth analyses carried out by independent experts, indicates a serious prospective imbalance of the fund, whose dimension tends to widen over time in the absence of interventions,” he continued. “In concrete terms, this means that the current system is not able to guarantee in the medium term the fulfillment of the pension obligation for future generations.”
“In light of this and all well-considered, I would therefore like to inform you of the decision, which I have taken today, to appoint His Eminence, Kevin Card. Farrell, the sole Director for the Pension Fund, believing that this choice represents, at this time, an essential step to respond to the challenges that our social security system faces in the future,” explained Pope Francis.
The Vatican has been plagued with financial scandal for decades, and over the last few years, Pope Francis has asked Farrell to play increasingly larger roles in dealing with the Holy Sees’ troubled finances.
Farrell’s latest appointment comes notwithstanding a less-than-stellar reputation for observation and moral judgment.
Last year, Farrell wrote to Pope Francis signaling his approval of admitting divorced and “remarried” Catholics to Holy Communion, saying, “The Dicastery [for Laity, Family, and Life] is working on the preparation of a text specifically regarding – as you wished, Your Holiness – men and women who, having marriage failure behind them, live in new unions.”
The Catholic Church teaches that divorced Catholics in civil “remarriages” who refuse to live in complete continence must be denied Holy Communion, which is a “constant and universal practice” of the Church based on Sacred Scripture. “The matrimonial union of man and woman is indissoluble: God Himself has determined it,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church states.
In 2017, when LGBT activist priest Fr. James Martin published his pro-homosexual book “Building a Bridge,” Cardinal Farrell joined Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, then-Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego, and heterodox nun Sister Jeannine Gramick, SL, in offering words of praise on the book’s dust jacket.
Farrell said that the book, which criticizes Catholic teaching on homosexuality as “cruel,” is “welcome and much-needed.”
In 2018, Farrell claimed he was “shocked” and “overwhelmed” at the bombshell revelations of sexual predation by defrocked Theodore McCarrick, despite having lived with and worked under the then-Washington, D.C. cardinal for several years and rising through the ranks thanks to his patronage.
READ: Pope Francis names Cardinal with close ties to McCarrick as key figure in next papal election
In a short video interview with Catholic News Service (CNS) at the time, Cardinal Farrell was emphatic in his denial of any knowledge of his longtime mentor’s behavior, yet seemingly unable to put together full sentences.
Uttering just 101 words, punctuated with long pauses and “ums,” normal syntax eluded him as he stumbled through the interview:
I was a priest of Washington, D.C. I worked in the chancery, in Washington. And never. No indication. None whatsoever.
Nobody ever talked to me about that. And I was involved – heavily involved – in Washington, in the whole from 2000 on. And sex abuse.
So I really don’t have any knowledge or anything to add about more than that.
Farrell also seemed to put distance between himself and his former boss, the man under whom he became a bishop while in D.C.:
When the six years I was there with him, I didn’t know Cardinal McCarrick prior to his coming to Washington, D.C.
Almost nobody bought what Farrell attempted to sell: “Cardinal Farrell says that he worked in the chancery but does not mention that he shared an apartment with Cardinal McCarrick. He needs to address it,” said Matthew Schmitz, senior editor for respected First Things magazine in a tweet at the time.
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