New Pope Reappoints Curia Chiefs

Pope Benedict XVI reappointed the entire leadership of the Roman Curia on Thursday, avoiding any immediate shake-up of a Vatican administration whose growth under his predecessor he had criticized as “alarming.”

Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the highest-ranking official after the pope, kept his job as secretary of state, although he is two years past the retirement age for curial officials. The 77-year-old Italian has held the post since 1990.

His two immediate subordinates, Undersecretary Leonardo Sandri of Argentina and Foreign Minister Giovanni Lajolo of Italy, were also asked to stay on “until otherwise provided for.” So were prelates in charge of the other nine congregations, 11 councils, three tribunals and seven commissions that govern the 1-billion-member Roman Catholic Church.

Senior deputies in those agencies will be allowed to serve out five-year terms begun under Pope John Paul II, the Vatican announced.

The decision, two days after his election, was in keeping with Benedict’s emphasis on continuity with John Paul. But Vatican specialists said the German pontiff could prove to be a different kind of manager once he settles into the job and starts an expected housecleaning.

When a pope dies, all heads of the agencies that make up the church’s central administration are required to resign. Each office is run by a caretaker deputy until a new pope appoints his own prefects, presidents and judges.

Thursday’s announcement allowed the Vatican to resume normal operations for the first time since John Paul’s death April 2, as it geared up for Benedict’s formal installation Sunday.

The new papacy officially began Tuesday when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger accepted the job and took the name Benedict. On Wednesday, he gave the equivalent of a state of the union speech, using conciliatory language to reassure critics of his archconservative record that his reign would not further divide the church or alienate people of other faiths.

Imitating John Paul, Benedict intends to underscore that message with highly visible words and gestures, at least in the coming days. He plans to meet with journalists Saturday, and his installation Mass on Sunday will be in St. Peter’s Square, rather than inside St. Peter’s Basilica. On Monday, he is to visit a church built over the tomb of St. Paul, an apostle revered by Orthodox Christians as well as Roman Catholics.

The Vatican has unveiled an e-mail address for the new pope -- benedictxvi@vatican.va -- following an innovation started by John Paul.

Rome city officials said they expected an influx of half a million visitors to attend the Mass or watch on giant TV screens set up in streets near the Vatican.

As it did for John Paul’s funeral, the Italian government will close airspace over Rome as a security measure for the world leaders expected to attend. They include King Juan Carlos I of Spain, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and the presidents of Argentina, Colombia and Honduras.

The Vatican offered another sign of continuity with John Paul’s reign when it refused to comment Thursday on news reports detailing the 78-year-old Ratzinger’s past health problems, citing the pope’s privacy. John Paul suffered from Parkinson’s disease for more than a decade, but the Vatican never officially acknowledged that until after his death.

Ratzinger was hospitalized at least twice in the early 1990s, including in September 1991 after he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage that temporarily affected his left field of vision, according to Rome-based journalist John L. Allen in a 2000 biography of the cardinal. Quoting from the book, news agencies cited those health problems after Ratzinger’s election.

Reuters quoted Ratzinger’s former private secretary, Bishop Josef Clemens, as saying the pope had no history of chronic health problems. “He is extremely well,” Clemens told the news agency.

Popes have no retirement age, as do curial officials. Many of those officials are approaching 75 or have passed that age, and are expected to be replaced soon.

To give his successor a freer hand, John Paul made few new appointments in his final years, allowing many elderly prelates to stay on. Until his election, Ratzinger had served 24 years as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the guardian of Catholic teaching.

One of his priorities as pope will be filling his former position. Speculation focused on several like-minded conservatives: Belgian Bishop Andre Mutien Leonard; Italian Archbishop Angelo Amato; and Cardinals Camillo Ruini of Italy, Christoph Schoenborn of Austria and Francis George of Chicago.

As a cardinal, Ratzinger advocated streamlining the Curia, which employs at least 1,740 people by one recent count, even while helping John Paul to centralize authority there at the expense of local bishops.

But while John Paul traveled the world and paid scant attention to the Curia, Ratzinger chafed at what he described in a 1988 book as “an excessive amount of institutionalization ... in the church, which is alarming.” He called for reforms aimed “not at the creation of yet more institutions, but at their reduction.”

Vatican specialists say that Benedict will travel less than John Paul did and push the Curia harder to carry out his agenda. “The overall thrust will be for smaller size, less paperwork and more focus on core concerns,” said Allen, the biographer.