In recent decades, popes have reinforced centralised control of the Catholic Church by influencing who gets promoted in each country, writes TP O’Mahony

THE brisk sales of copies of Time magazine, with Pope Francis on the cover as Person of the Year, is yet another indicator of the growing popularity of the pontiff from Argentina. Yet none of this can disguise the fact the Church over which he presides is, in the words of Hans Kung, “gravely ill”.

THE firing on May 24 of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the president of the Vatican Bank, because of a failure to “promote transparency”, must have sent a frisson of fear through the upper echelons of the Roman Curia, coming as it did three decades after another scandal involving the same institution.