Somebody asked me, “Who’s Becciu?” The only thing I knew about him was how to pronounce his last name–assuming it’s Italian. The tale of his departure from the active cardinalate is whispered here. Apparently, it’s about finances.
Maybe a decade ago I might have something to say about church politics. I feel less engaged these days. Twelve-plus years in the insular world of campus ministry plus the frontier of the Pac NW does that to you, maybe.
From Rocco, with an embedded link if you read Italian:
According to Italian reports, the cardinal thought he was going to a standard 6pm audience to present Francis with decrees on causes of canonization when, Becciu said today, the Pope told him “that he no longer trusts me.”
“I felt a little dazed,” Becciu said. “Until 6.02, I thought I was his friend, a faithful executor for the Pope…. I don’t think I’m corrupt.”
A well-connected cleric once told me that more than sexual escapades or abuse perps, if the money scandals of the Church ever saw light, it would burn brightly from parishes all the way to Rome.
I don’t want to make light of financial wrongdoing or compare it to the spiritual arson of predators and those who covered them up. But there’s no doubt that people value material things more than life itself. We need look no deeper than the opposition to #BLM or even the latest charges from Kentucky: firing a gun through a wall is more grave than the killing of an innocent citizen in her nightwear in her own home.
The impact on the liturgical front is the beatification next month of Knights of Columbus founder Michael McGivney in Connecticut.
Catholic Sensibility 
Not sure this really qualifies as ‘Church politics’, in the sense of competing power blocs or ideological factions. Unless ‘being tough on crime’ can be seen as a political stance rather than a commitment to probity. I guess we don’t/won’t know the full story, so Pope Francis’s apparently autocratic decree, and the lack of due process, may be illusory.