Ave & vale

Pope Benedict XVI’s surprise resignation has set the Catholic Church in quite the tailspin; primarily because it’s exposed some stuff at the executive level that I expect the organization—like many other multinational corporations—would prefer to keep in the boardroom.

As you know, when there’s a vacancy at the chairman level, the top-line execs congregate to elect a replacement. Those execs would be cardinals. But the executive toilet is just awash with scandal, which would ordinarily not be an obstacle to business as usual except that some of the dirt has been leaked.

For one thing, the cardinal from the UK, Keith O’Brien, has been forced to resign by the outgoing Benedict. O’Brien had submitted his resignation some time ago, he said, but apparently the pope decided to move up his day of departure significantly when the Vatican proved unable to stop allegations that O’Brien has a history of being too up-close-and-personal with priests under his pastoral care. It was evidently back in the day, but still…

What that means is that, since O’Brien (who evidently had his little roll-on bag already packed for the conclave) now won’t be joining his red-hatted brethren, the UK has lost its sole representative to the new board election.

On the other hand, the retired archbishop of the Los Angeles Diocese, Roger Mahoney, is going to the ecclesiastical equivalent of Disney World, even though critics have said he should stick to his knitting at home, given his involvement in alleged systemic cover-ups of ongoing child abuse by priests in the diocese. Even though he retired some time ago, Mahoney was only last month “stripped…of his public duties after it was revealed that he plotted to conceal child molestation by priests,” according to the LA Times story.

You know that by the time the diocese gets around to taking action, there’s no “alleged” about things and they’re in a wagon-circling exercise, so it’s kind of interesting to see that while Mahoney isn’t deemed fit by the Church infrastructure to open parish fairs, he’s okay to have a say in who’s going to be running the company business for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…a story originating in La Repubblica and reported elsewhere claims that a team of cardinals investigating the so-called Vati-leaks scandal indicated a “network of gay prelates in the Vatican”, and that blackmail had been one of the consequences. This report may or may not be a factor in Benedict’s sudden announcement of retirement, which did actually have a “kay-I’m-outta-here-bye” feel to it.

If this were GM or Oracle or Barclay’s, I’d nuke some popcorn and crack open a Diet Coke to follow along. But it’s the company founded by Saint Peter, for God’s sake, and this is just so dispiriting. Makes you wonder who’s going to cleanse the temple and whether there’s a flamethrower big enough to get the job done.

So I suppose that it’s really nit-picky to note that apparently the papal Twitter account is going to disappear with Benedict. Perhaps more of these guys should have been occupying their thumbs with their smartphone keyboards.