Word: casaroli
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...months John Paul has had to delegate most of the responsibility for the day-to-day operation of the church to Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, Vatican Secretary of State. Casaroli, 66, presides over weekly sessions of the Council of the Curia, the Vatican's chief administrative body, and keeps a watchful eye over the Holy See's worldwide communication network, as well as its complex local government. For weeks the Italian press has been referring to him as "il Vice Papa." Even so, many matters of doctrine and morals, which only the Pope can deal with, have been piling...
Though the Pope was impaired, business at the rigidly hierarchical Vatican moved on, intruding on the patient as discreetly as possible. John Paul met six times with Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, the Vatican Secretary of State, and was told of the defeat of a referendum proposal backed by the Pope that would have restricted abortions. He also received a surprise visit from Franciszek Cardinal Macharski, the Archbishop of Cracow and an old personal friend, who brought "the greetings of the people of Poland...
...oldest and most organized bureaucracies. If the Pope dies, administrative power goes automatically to the Vatican's Camerlengo, or Chamberlain, until a new Pope is elected. But when a Pope is sick or traveling, command goes to the Secretary of State, in this case Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, 66, the church's top diplomatic negotiator and the Pope's hand-picked and devoted No. 2 man. When John Paul fell in St. Peter's Square, Vatican housekeeping went on very much as if the Pope had just taken off on another trip...
...caretaker, Casaroli has limited but specific authority. In addition to running his own 300-man staff, which handles routine diplomatic business, he stands in for the Pope at weekly meetings of the Curia's Council of Cardinals, the Vatican's administrative leadership. He is also obliged to carry out all initiatives decided on and signed by the Pope. Among them: the long-planned creation of a pontifical council on the state of the family, and the publishing of the Pontiffs new decrees on the reform of canon law. But Cardinal Casaroli has no authority over policy on matters...
Precisely what John Paul will eventually do is still unknown, but in choosing the able and totally obedient Agostino Casaroli as his top aide, the Pope has signaled that power will be centralized in his office alone. He has a disconcerting tactic of popping into curial offices to look around, and of conferring with staff experts when their bosses are not present...