(VATICAN CITY) — Pope Francis marked his first month as pontiff on Saturday by naming eight cardinals from around the globe to a permanent advisory group to counsel him on running the Catholic Church and reforming the Vatican bureaucracy — a bombshell announcement that indicates he intends a shift in how the papacy should function. The panel includes only one current Vatican official; the rest are cardinals from North, Central and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia — a clear indication that Francis wants to reflect the universal nature of the church as he goes about governing. The church is growing and counts most of the world's Catholics in the southern hemisphere while it's shrinking in Europe, yet the Vatican and the 200-strong College of Cardinals, traditionally the pope's primary advisers, remain heavily European. In the run-up to the conclave that elected Francis the first Latin American pope one month ago, cardinals demanded the Vatican be more responsive to their needs on the ground, and said the bureaucracy itself must be overhauled. Including representatives from each continent in a permanent advisory panel to the pope would seem to go a long way toward answering those calls. In its announcement Saturday, the Vatican said Francis got the idea to form the advisory body from the pre-conclave meetings where such complaints were aired. "He has formed a group of cardinals to advise him in the governing of the universal church and to study a revision of the apostolic constitution Pastor Bonus on the Roman Curia," the statement said. Pope John Paul II issued Pastor Bonus in 1988, and it functions effectively as the blueprint for the administration of the Holy See, known as the Roman Curia, and the Vatican City State. The document metes out the work and jurisdictions of the congregations, pontifical councils and other offices that make up the governance of the Catholic Church. Pastor Bonus itself was a revision of the 1967 document that marked the last major reform of the Vatican bureaucracy, undertaken by Pope Paul VI. A reform of the Vatican bureaucracy has been demanded for decades,(http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=world.time.com&blog=19871253&post=81469&subd=timeglobalspin&ref=&feed=1)
Via: TIME GlobalSpin