(Catholic Culture) — With a curious appointment last 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?
On Thursday 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.
READ: Pope Francis appoints McCarrick-linked US cardinal to oversee major changes to Vatican pension fund
Knowledge is power
Cardinal Farrell already has had considerable clout in the Vatican’s financial affairs. As CWN reported yesterday:
In 2019 the Pontiff appointed him as the camerlengo, the official who supervises the material goods of the Holy See during a papal interregnum. In 2020 he was named president of the Pontifical Commission on Confidential Matters, and in 2022 he became the president of the Pontifical Commission on Investments.
Vatican secrets, Vatican investments, Vatican finances: whenever the discussion turns to these matters – with their obvious potential for corruption – one now finds Cardinal Farrell at the head of the table.
Why has Pope Francis chosen to concentrate so much authority in the hands of this one prelate? Does the Pontiff view him as a potential successor to Peter’s Throne? Not likely; Cardinal Farrell is already 77 years old. (Of course then-Cardinal Bergoglio had just turned 76 when the conclave opened in 2013.) However there is no doubt that when the next conclave comes, Cardinal Farrell will play an important role in the drama. Between now and then the Pope’s trusted “fixer” will have many opportunities to do favors for his colleagues. Still more important, as JD Flynn text wrote in 2020 – two key appointments ago: “Information is currency in Rome, and Cardinal Farrell’s new position makes him uniquely informed, and therefore among the most powerful figures in Vatican leadership.”
Let’s look at the question from a different perspective. What sort of man would you choose to confidential financial affairs, if you knew that a misstep could cause not just a serious loss but a major scandal? Ideally you would want someone loyal, discreet, street-smart, a good judge of character, a sound grasp of finance, a proven ability to spot phonies, and – did I mention discretion? With those qualifications in mind, let’s take another look at the clerical career of Cardinal Farrell.
He was ‘shocked’
Again I will quote from our CWN news report:
Born in Ireland, the future cardinal was ordained as a priest of the Legionaires of Christ in 1978. In 1984 he left the Legionaires to become a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, where he rose to become vicar general, serving under then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. He was named Bishop of Dallas in 2007, then appointed to his current post in the Roman Curia by Pope Francis in 2016, and raised to the College of Cardinals soon thereafter.
Two factors stand out in that thumbnail resume: The future cardinal was a prominent member of a religious order marked by a serious scandal. Then he became the right-hand man of a prelate who provoked an even graver scandal. It is curious, isn’t it, that he now holds multiple posts at the Vatican that could provide grist for scandal-mongers?
Father Farrell’s departure from the Legionaries of Christ was explained as a consequence of “philosophical differences.” Although he was a prominent member of the group, there is no evidence that he had been aware that its founder, the late Marcial Maciel, was raking off funds to support a double life, subsidizing his mistresses and illegitimate children. Apparently he – like many others – failed to see any hints of impropriety.
Then he moved to Washington and became a close aide to then-Cardinal McCarrick. In 2018, when the truth about McCarrick’s serial abuses finally became public, now-Cardinal Farrell – who had lived in the same household as McCarrick – announced that he was “shocked” by the revelations, even though stories about McCarrick’s beach-house escapades had circulated widely for the ecclesiastical rumor-mill for more than twenty years. Again there is no evidence that Cardinal Farrell did have solid evidence of McCarrick’s abuse. But this time it would have been more remarkable that he failed to pick up on the clues. As Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote in National Review at the time: “What a life! To have been twice put in the best place to know that, at that level, ‘everyone knows,’ and yet to have known nothing.”
Either the future cardinal did know something about the scandals around him, in which case he should be disqualified from holding sensitive position because of his negligence; or he did not know, in which case he should be disqualified because of remarkable naivete. In fact even his past connections would be reason enough to hand those sensitive posts to another cleric, if only to avoid the uncomfortable questions that I am now raising. Yet there he is, in the top ranks of Vatican leadership, at the center of the web.
READ: Pope Francis names Cardinal with close ties to McCarrick as key figure in next papal election
Whose patronage?
After his service in Washington, Farrell was named Bishop of Dallas. One would not ordinarily expect an Irish-born auxiliary bishop from DC to be the leading candidate to head a diocese in Texas. Nor would one expect the Bishop of Dallas – not even an archbishop – to be named the prefect of a Vatican dicastery, and quickly receive a cardinal’s red hat. Who was promoting his quick rise through the hierarchy, if not “Uncle Ted” McCarrick?
(Here I pause to remark that Pope Francis has named five cardinals from the US: Cupich, Farrell, Gregory, and McElroy, and Tobin. All five were closely associated with McCarrick.)
Five years ago, when Pope Francis made Cardinal Farrell his camerlengo, I wrote that “the timing of the appointment was absolutely stunning.”
There was no rush to fill the post; the previous occupant of the post had died several months ago. This week the Catholic world had been braced for a very different sort of announcement, about the long-rumored laicization of McCarrick. To promote one cardinal, at the same time that his sponsor is defrocked, suggests a complete indifference to public perceptions. To complicate matters still further, the appointment came just a week before the highly anticipated Vatican ‘summit’ on sexual abuse, and the prominence given to Farrell is another reminder that some Vatican officials have gained influence despite their negligence in responding to abuse.
Now in 2024 the Vatican is only just recovering from the scandals created by the “trial of the century,” and awaiting the aftershocks that will doubtless occur when the convicted defendants appeal their sentences. The incident at the root of that scandal – the loss of millions of dollars in a speculative real-estate deal – might have been avoided altogether if Vatican investors had been shrewd enough to recognize the dangers. Yet now the Vatican’s investments are supervised by a man who has, if we take him at his word, demonstrated that he cannot recognize a con job.
Personnel is policy. The Vatican’s professed desire for transparency and accountability counts for little if the institutional secrets and the confidential finances are consigned to a prelate whose track record suggests that he sees no evil.
Reprinted with permission from Catholic Culture.