Catholic Church under scrutiny

Mission to overhaul clergy finances triggers training for leaders to respond well to economic needs

Cardinals attend the Easter vigil mass given by Pope Francis at St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City © Getty

Rachel Sanderson

Pope Francis’s clean up of the Catholic Church’s finances is extending far beyond the walls of Vatican City.

In a first for the Catholic Church, Rome’s Pontifical Lateran University, a hub of teaching for Catholic clergy, has started a course to teach priests and the laity management and finance skills.

Organisers say that it is the latest demonstration of Pope Francis’s desire to overhaul Church finances, and the demand for leaders to be better trained to respond to the Church’s economic needs.

“The Pope has shone a light on the importance of good management not only at the Vatican Bank but across parishes,” says Charles Zech, faculty director for the Center for Church Management and Business Ethics (CCMBE) at Villanova School of Business in the US. In partnersip with the Pontifical Lateran University (PUL) in Rome, it is running the programme during the second year of its International School of Pastoral Management.

The move follows strides taken by the Church under Pope Francis to shake off a reputation as a murky haven for illicit behaviour from tax evasion to money laundering.

Pope Francis has driven reform of the Institute for Religious Works (IOR) — informally known as the Vatican Bank — which has been shrouded in controversy since its founding during the second world war.

His overhaul of the Vatican’s finances has extended from empowering lay specialists to regulate the city state’s financial structure and run its bank, to creating an economic ministry to unify the administration, which has long been characterised by a lack of transparency and compartmentalisation.

Most recently, the Vatican also struck an agreement with Italian authorities to end decades of secret banking.

But church experts say the new course by the PUL is significant because it demonstrates the Pope’s recognition that Church management needs a dramatic upgrade at all levels, not just in the Vatican Bank and the Curia. By instructing the PUL to institute this programme, he is sending another not-so-subtle message that finances matter to the Vatican.

Prof Zech says an investigation he led several years ago found 85 per cent of US diocese had suffered from some kind of embezzlement. Many did a limited audit of their finances, and a fifth of those he surveyed did not do any at all.

“It is a huge problem to the credibility of Catholics,” he says.

The first cohort of students from the PUL began their 15-week programme in February. This will include a week-long residency at Villanova in April 2016.

According to Prof Zech, Villanova will provide online and in-person education, alongside professors from the PUL, to students from around the world. An annual, one-week summer programme will also be established on the US campus and a series of twice yearly international research conferences on church management will take place in Rome and the US.

A desire to professionalise the administration of the Church also comes as its leaders in the US and Europe seek to reshape the administration of parishes amid falling numbers of priests.

In a move that shook the wider Catholic Church, last year Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York was forced to merge more than 100 parishes as falling numbers of clergy had made them impossible to sustain.

As part of the shake up to allow priests to concentrate on their “day job”, lay managers took over the “temporal” side of church business, leaving it up to the clergy to focus on the spiritual side.

For the time being, these lay administrative roles are often done voluntarily by retirees or as a second career that is usually lowly paid.

But the professionalisation of the Church’s administration is a trend Prof Zech sees continuing under the guidance of Pope Francis, and also because of the wider modernisation of the Catholic Church and a push for greater
transparency.

Participants on Church of England programme see value

The introduction of a business school training course for senior clergy in the Church of England (CoE) has proved controversial, sparking complaints that teaching management techniques would be at the expense of learning pastoral skills, writes Jonathan Moules.

In 2014, the CoE worked with Cambridge’s Judge Business School to develop a week-long course for deans of cathedrals and heads of larger churches, teaching skills necessary to better manage their operations, such as reading a balance sheet, strategic planning and overseeing marketing campaigns.

The proposals for the “mini MBA” qualification upset some bishops when they were first set out in a report for the church, chaired by Lord Green, former HSBC chairman and a practising Christian. However, now the first programme has finished, many of the 28 people who took part have praised the course, including some who claim their initial scepticism about its value was subsequently assuaged.

Catherine Ogle, dean of Birmingham Cathedral, admits to having concerns that the teaching would not be put in a theological context, but says these lifted after starting the course.

“When talking about models for what success looked like, for example, we had to reflect as we went on that we follow a saviour who was not successful in lots of ways in that he didn’t earn much and was a failure in that he died young. The teachers worked with this rather than allowing those views to be subverted,” she says.

Pete Wilcox, dean of Liverpool Cathedral, was already a convert to the merits of formal training before attending Judge having had a hand in Lord Green’s report. However, Judge was his first experience of business school.

“We are like a small or medium sized enterprise but we need to juggle more things than most businesses,” Mr Wilcox says. “That is the beauty of cathedral life.”

Liverpool’s cathedral has a turnover in excess of £4m and about 80 people on its payroll. Its activities include a food bank, a volunteer programme for the unemployed and schools outreach work, as well as a schedule of daily worship services, all of which require budgeting, planning and marketing skills, Mr Wilcox notes.

“Ask any dean what is the deficit in their training and they will say that they find themselves effectively managing a small business and that is where they know they need training,” he says.

Mr Wilcox claims he was particularly impressed with the degree of preparation completed ahead of lessons by his tutors at Judge.

“The chap who did the session on finance had downloaded our set of cathedral accounts and had created a set of fictional accounts that was credible to use in the classroom.

“Virtually as a mantra, each lecturer started by saying I am not an expert in cathedrals or churches so this is going to be a conversation. That established a good learning environment.”

The cost of the CoE training programme at Judge has been put at £2m between now and the end of 2016, plus £785,000 a year after that. The first programme, run in March, will now be repeated for a second group of cathedral deans next January.

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