In an extraordinary move, Lesley-Anne Knight, my successor as Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis (CI, the Church's international relief agency), has not been granted the nihil obstat (basically, official approval) by the Vatican's Secretariat of State to stand for another four-year term.
There is outrage in the Confederation.
According to the statutes, a list of candidates must be presented timeously to the Holy See which then rings the secretary of the applicant's bishops' conference to ascertain whether the candidate is 'in good standing' with the Church.
The list is sent to all members of the Caritas Internationalis Confederation (165 members globally, serving 24 million poor people and supporting projects worth US$5.5 billion). The Executive Committee then elects from that list and the successful candidate is presented to the General Assembly for ratification.
It is completely within the statutory right of the Holy See to refuse even an incumbent candidate, but not to judge how that candidate has fared in his/her job in terms of management, carrying out the Assembly-approved strategic plan, even serving the poor.
That is the task of the members of the Confederation according to its democratic constitution — and according to the members' greater knowledge of the services rendered by the Secretary General. If it were otherwise, the winning candidate would be an appointee of the Secretariat of State, not someone elected by the membership.
It seems to me that, in this instance, the Holy See is making a judgment call on the work of the incumbent which is the task of the Caritas membership. If Knight was in good standing with the Church four years ago, what has changed?
The reasons given for not granting Knight the nihil obstat (to my knowledge, the first time this has been done to an incumbent in the history of the Confederation) are outlined in a rather oblique way in a letter signed by Cardinal Bertone (the Pope's right-hand man) to all bishops' conferences.
It includes a reference to Durante L'Ultima Cena ('During the Last Supper'), a letter signed by Pope John Paul II in 2004, awarding CI 'public, juridical and canonical personality'.
This was negotiated and signed during my tenure as we all wished to make our special status with the Holy See clearer so that we could work in a more dynamic, cooperative manner with the social and political structure of the Church throughout the world while maintaining the freedom of action that was an integral part