A leading Vatican's official has challenged claims of internal tension in the Catholic Church, underplaying the popular notion of a reforming Pope contending with conservative resistors.
Cardinal Gerhard Mueller rejected the claims that Pope Francis is battling internal opposition to his attempts at administrative reform, including combatting clerical sex abuse, Religion News Service reports.
'I think you should put an end to this cliché, the idea that there is on the one hand the Pope who wants reform and on the other a group of resistors who would like to block it,' he said.
'It is part of our Catholic faith and the work ethos of the Roman Curia to support the Pope's universal mission, entrusted to him by Jesus Christ.'
Mueller, a conservative cardinal, is the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a key department in the Vatican administration. He was speaking in an interview published on Sunday in the Italian daily Corriere Della Sera.
Marie Collins, an Irish sex abuse survivor, resigned last week from a commission set up by Pope Francis to combat clerical sex abuse. She accused the Vatican of 'shameful' resistance to Pope Francis' attempts at reform on the issue – and said Mueller's conservative office were the main reason for her resignation.
'The work we want to do is to make children and young adults now and in future safer in the church environment from the horror of abuse,' Collins told RNS.
'There are people in the Vatican who do not want to change or understand the need to change.'
Mueller played down divisions, but did admit that the Pope's 2015 proposal of a tribunal for handling clerical sex abuse cases, and judging abusing bishops, hadn't been successful. He said that after 'intense discussion' about 'the fight against clerical paedophilia' the Vatican judged that they already had the jurisdiction, tools and legal resources to 'address any criminal negligence by bishops'.
