"The Curia never as ineffective, closed and badly governed as today"

Van Swissinfo:

"We've almost forgotten that reform of the Curia was part of Benedict's program at the start," recalled Isabelle de Gaulmyn, who was Vatican correspondent for the French Catholic daily La Croix at the time.

"Seven years later, the Curia has never seemed as opaque, ineffective, closed and badly governed as it is today."

"He's a solitary scholar and he's not interested in the bureaucracy," said Chester Gillis, professor of theology at Georgetown University in Washington. "His real ambition seems to be to finish the third volume of his book."

"The "Vatileaks" scandal has revealed, among other issues, the infighting behind the sacking of the Vatican bank president. The pope's own butler has been arrested on suspicion of stealing documents that have since been leaked to the media.

The target seems to be Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state (prime minister), whose critics accuse him of playing politics and blocking their efforts to stamp out corruption and cronyism in Vatican management.

Benedict's aides apparently did not prepare him for the wave of sharp protests from Catholics, Jews and even German Chancellor Angela Merkel to his surprise decision in 2009 to readmit four rebel bishops to the Church after a 21-year schism.

The shocked pope had to write a long letter explaining the step and admit nobody in the Curia had done an Internet search for him and seen one bishop was a notorious Holocaust denier.

The Vatican has also reacted slowly and defensively to the clerical sexual abuse scandal shaking national churches around the world, giving the impression it puts its institutional interests ahead of the children molested by priests.

The cumulative effect of such incidents over the years and revelations of Vatican mismanagement now has been to cast Benedict's as "a tin ear papacy," said Christopher Bellitto, a Catholic Church historian at Kean University in New Jersey.

"This all seems to be a power game that matters only to the power players," he said. "It seems to be a Church hierarchy further distancing itself from the people in the pews."