Pope Benedict Calls Rare Vatican " Cabinet Meeting " On Procedure of Publication and Preparation of Documents

An Italian Newspaper , Il Messaggero , is reporting that well there is some fire to some that controversial smoke we saw late last year. ( The translator has comments at the area he does the translation)

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI has decided to call the heads of all the congregations and pontifical councils for a meeting to lay down the rules for the procedure they must all follow in the preparation and publication of documents.

The object is to reinforce the level of collaboration between the dicasteries and the Secretariat of State as the central organism that should serve as the conveyor belt for Vatican documents.

The letter calling the dicastery heads to the meeting on January 28 was received last week in a double envelop marked 'Riservato' ('top secret'). The meeting will be held in the Sala Bologna of the Apostolic Palace on the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, patron of academics and librarians. Meetings like this - similar to cabinet meetings - are relatively rare and take place about once a year for tbe purpose of streamlining Vatican govenance.

Last year, the summit had to do with problems relating to religious orders and the exercise of authority in some of these institutes of consecrated life. The year before, it was on the 'pedophile priest' scandal. This time, it is to define the central role of the Secretariat of State in coordinating the activities of the various dicasteries, especially in the matter of publication of documents attributed to the Vatican.

It seems designed to avoid incidents like the episode last October when the Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace issued a Note regarding the global economic and financial crisis that caused some controversy because of its recommendation for a world public authority to regulate world financial activities. Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone said at the time that he had not seen the document before it was published.

The line expressed in the document was not that of the Secretariat of State, much less that of the Pope, such that L'Osservatore Romano was constrained to issue some days later a clarification on this issue. To make things worse, the document from Justice and Peace contradicted the encyclical Caritas in veritate, which could have been avoided if there had been more coordination.