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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: IS THE NEW AGE REALLY HERE?
4/12/2013 5:54:48 PM

Matthew’s Message: April 11, 2013

Matthew Ward 222As received by Suzy Ward – April 11, 2013

www.matthewbooks.com

With loving greetings from all souls at this station, this is Matthew. First we want to quell any anxieties about North Korea’s missile activity. Reared to expect the same adulation and subservience North Koreans gave his father, Kim Jong Un is bereft of common sense and more so, a sense of security in his leadership position. It is not that his rhetoric is bluff, but without knowing how to govern his country, he shows to its citizens and the world the military might at his command.

Depending on other national leaders’ reactions to his questionable motives in positioning the missiles as he has, he may decide to launch one or more of them. If so, he will be embarrassed by their failure to function, thanks to the intervention of your space family’s technology. If that is the outcome, it’s an unknown as to how he would save face, so we say that it would be in everyone’s best interests to replace sanctions with discussions.

Many have asked us to comment on Pope Francis, who is in millions of thoughts around the world, and we are happy to do this. No, his humility is not “an act” and he cannot be the “salvation of the Catholic church.” He has not been cloned, and he won’t be—the Illuminati’s cloning centers have been shut down by volunteers from other civilizations who are living among you.

Like his colleagues in the Vatican and some individuals outside, Pope Francis knows of situations hidden from public view, and he has the innate goodness to feel compelled to end the most ungodly—the international headquarters of Satanism in the bowels of the Vatican. As the light keeps intensifying, that end will indeed come, but it remains to be seen if the Pope has the ability to defy those who are dead set against letting the world know that this diabolical situation ever existed within the Vatican walls.

Other information they do not want revealed is that they have kept hidden the ancient records that show the crucifixion and resurrection and other parts of the Bible are fabricated and other sections of the records were strategically omitted. They don’t want the world to know that “God’s rules” were devised by early church leaders to control the masses and acquire personal wealth, and later other dogma were added to serve the opulent style in which residents of the Vatican have lived. They also want to keep hidden their massive fortune in art treasures stolen during World War II.

Pope Francis has the moral courage to try to disclose that information, but again, given the strong opposition, it remains to be seen if he can manage to do so. When those truths emerge, we fervently hope that the religiously devout will have absorbed enough light to realize that churches’ multitude of good works are based in spirituality, not religious dogma.

A reader recently wrote to my mother about something in our last message, and her comments in summary are: You said that negative thoughts and feelings about an abhorrent situation keep it going. How is it even possible to have any positive thoughts about this? She was writing about human trafficking, but our reply pertains to all abhorrent situations in your world.

The several issues we spoke about in our last message are of controversial nature—there is no controversy whatsoever about situations like human trafficking, sex slavery! Although soul contracts and karma are involved, the point we wish to address is the writer’s question.

Prior messages have included our recommendation to visualize Earth in golden white light because it literally “brings to light” terribly disturbing conditions that formerly were hidden from public knowledge. Only when they are exposed can action be taken to end them and start healing the traumas they have caused.

You cannot “unknow” your knowledge of despicable conditions, and never would we suggest that you try to bury it—ultimately that would adversely affect body, mind and spirit. Rather, we urge you to visualize Earth immersed in golden white light, then see it start to slowly rotate with happy faces appearing, and send forth feelings of love. The energy of your image, loving sensations and intention will go out into the world.

God’s energy distribution system, you could call it, assures that light-love energy from all sources off- and on-planet reaches the souls who most need it, those who are oppressed and their oppressors. Your energy along with light from myriad other sources is what will end all kinds of oppression in your society.

Now then, we wish to address a statement in a recent message: Eventually everyone will know that homosexuality is an advanced stage of spiritual growth wherein feminine and masculine energies are more balanced than in heterosexual persons.

A complex situation stated in such brevity begs explanation—especially since homosexuality is one of the divisive issues plaguing your world—and I have asked my mother to copy the part in a book that is relevant. Although it also includes information that pertains to residents of Nirvana, Earth’s spirit world, we think you will find all of it enlightening.

The following excerpt from the chapter “Relationships” in Matthew, Tell Me about Heaven was transmitted early in 1994.

Suzy: Matthew, can homosexual partners here continue their unions in Nirvana if they want to?

Matthew: Yes. Mother, homosexuality is not understood on Earth, and this is a good context in which to explain it. Homosexuality is an evolutionary stage of the spirit even more than an aspect of the physical being, and it is not to be condemned or honored any more than any other physical or spiritual stage of development.

Remember, we are dealing with cumulative souls here, not single personages. Within each cumulative soul are perhaps as many as thousands of lifetimes of experiencing as male, female and androgynous beings in both incarnate and discarnate bodies. However, it is the immediate past life that most emphatically affects the beginning growth state here.

If that Earth lifetime was homosexual in orientation, it will enter here the same way. Since our bodies aren’t designed for sexual activity, only the mental aspect of the orientation accompanies the arriving soul.

The immediate past Earth lifetime has another impact upon this issue. The people there who most vehemently denounce homosexuality are those whose souls experienced an immediate past lifetime as a personage with that orientation.

S: Matthew, that doesn’t make sense to me. I’d think understanding and acceptance would be much more likely.

M: It’s a complex and confusing psychic situation, Mother. The energy of the personages is still fractured from their immediate previous life experiences. At the extreme, homosexuals have been physically tortured and even killed, and at the least they have been maligned, often even by their families, to such extent that their psyches were severely damaged. Maybe they lived with the pain of denial or shame or the guilt of deception.

Whatever their experience, their energy has not healed enough for them to see the very same sorts of traumatic situations they themselves experienced and thus feel empathy. Rather, they see revenge opportunities.

The cycle of experiencing happens so quickly that the pain of memories most recently known, but hidden from consciousness, is with them too closely for the healing that will come in subsequent lifetimes.

The lingering pain in the suppressed memories of those souls who in this lifetime chose heterosexual nature causes their extremely antagonistic attitudes toward homosexuals. Those painful feelings will not surface in the form of memories of their homosexual lifetime experiences, but in attitudes to stifle the memories.

This is the universal like-attracts-like principle. When the feelings resulting from harsh or unjust treatment in any situation are recent and intense, similar feelings are attracted to that soul. Suppressed memories subconsciously know the source and recall it, thus attracting “like.” However, the current lifetime psyche cannot consciously know that the attraction is of shared feelings, and the painful sensations of the suppressed memories take over.

Moving forward from that point in the psychic labyrinth comes in the process of lifeprint review, identification of karmic lessons still to be learned, choosing the next lifetime, and progress in spiritual awareness.

S: Do people who were homosexual in their immediate past lifetime always go through what you described, which would seem just to perpetuate things, or is there some leveling out point where all of us will accept each other just as we are?

M: The “leveling out” most assuredly is part of the divine plan, because feelings of prejudice and hatred and the infliction of emotional and physical cruelty are impediments to spiritual growth. However, even with the acceleration of light being beamed at your planet to dispel the negativity abounding in humankind, please do not expect this change to be completed within the next generation.

S: Is homosexuality more prevalent now than previously in Earth history?

M: No, but there are more people now than previously in your recorded history, so the same percentage creates the greater numbers. Throughout your recorded history well known and highly respected masters in one field or another have been homosexual, and many produced their brilliant and inspiring creations because of their tormented minds regarding this aspect of their nature.

You could say that without this element of their personage, they may not have been driven to create in the magnitude and splendor they did.

S: Why is homosexuality a necessary experience?

M: How better to learn balance in the two extremes of male and female sexual energy than on an integrated basis? The ideal is androgyny, which has nothing whatsoever to do with human sexual nature, but rather with the two opposites of human sexual energy attributes. Androgynous souls are far more spiritually advanced because of the male and female sexual energy balance they have achieved.

Just as male energy is not the province of only male humans, female energy is not confined to female humans. Male energy is harsh, often productive by ruthless means, always needing to prove a point or achieve success in a venture. Female energy is gentle, yet with greater, quiet strength as its foundation. Interconnectedness, which is the ultimate in conscious achievement, is female energy.

In relationships wherein one partner has only male energy traits and the other has only female energy traits, the female energy partner cannot withstand the imbalance lifelong or the life will not be long. In my awareness of such relationships, those which remained in that imbalance ended in early transition of the female energy soul. The survivor often has no frame of reference of his or her involvement in the partner’s death.

You say “That person’—or ‘you’— will be the death of me.” Like many other common expressions you use, that can be an accurate statement, but few understand the truth of their words. No blame is attributed here to either partner in such a relationship, as in many instances this is no more than karma being fulfilled according to pre-birth agreements. The dissolution of those partnerships by divorce also may be in accordance with the chosen lessons of their agreements.

Any balance within a lifetime is desirable. However, since sexual energy is one of the most essential aspects of the human psyche, the balance of male and female energies is probably the most desirable. In this realm there is that blending of male and female energies insofar as tendencies, sensibilities and sensitivities. That ideal state of balanced reality once existed on Earth, but it was corrupted.

Behaviors stemming from the perversion of the sexual energy stream have proliferated negativity on Earth in such proportions as to be almost unimaginable. By no means is sexual energy confined to what you commonly call “wanting sex” or “having sex.”

Although extending beyond the original intent of the sex drive, which was procreation, a satisfying sexual relationship brings harmony into the lives of loving mates, and I definitely am NOT speaking against a mutually pleasurable, beneficial sexual union.

Furthermore, it is possible to transmute sexual energy into other productive avenues, and many who have lost or never had loving mates, do so. But I am not addressing the positive use of this energy, only the rampant negativity created by perversion of the entire sexual energy stream.

This has been the root cause of all that you think of as evil attributes in human nature. There is no crime by your civil, religious or philosophical standards that is not committed from a root cause of sexual energy perversion.

As an example, Satanic worship involving the torture and sacrifice of human and animal lives and brutal sexual activities prevails on a scale that would beg disbelief, but is real. This is cloaked under the guise of “religion,” and your government officially recognizes it as such! You do not connect either those ungodly practices or their religion status with the perverted use of sexual energy that it actually is.

It shouldn’t surprise you that often murder is sexual energy directed into gross deviance, or that rape and incest are other examples. Promiscuous sexual encounters or obsession with either having sex or rigidly refraining from natural urges are more benign, but still destructive to the psyche.

The dark forces are behind all these behaviors resulting from perverted sexual energy. It is not uncommon for the most corrupted activities to lead to the basest of dense energy, and no other aspect of human nature has been so pivotal in alienating a person from God.

At soul level there is inseparability, but in physical life, the more corrupt and deviant the sexual energy, the more the people engaging in those activities are distancing themselves from God. Sadly for you and Earth, these free will choices are rampant in your civilization and far from the chosen missions in most of the souls’ pre-birth agreements.

Mother, however viewed by many on Earth, a loving homosexual partnership is NOT a perversion of sexual energy, and that brings us back to your question about homosexual unions in this realm.

Since there is no condemnation here of people’s former sexual orientation, clearly there is no judgment regarding which souls are attracted to each other as mates. Experiencing here on every level is designed for the souls’ spiritual evolvement, and that includes all unions. Whether heterosexual or homosexual in nature, the soul level energy and bonding commitment of all couples is totally respected.

Thank you, Mother. As you continue your journey toward increasing spiritual and conscious awareness, know that you are being assisted by the planet’s highest vibrations in many millennia. And you have the unconditional love, respect and admiration of all lighted beings in this universe.

LOVE and PEACE
Suzanne Ward
www.matthewbooks.com


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: IS THE NEW AGE REALLY HERE?
4/12/2013 5:55:59 PM

An Angelic Message via Bella Capozzi: Outside The Gilded Cage

imageAn Angelic Message via Bella Capozzi: Outside The Gilded Cage

As channeled by Bella Capozzi – April 11, 2013

http://cupcakesandangels.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/

Stretched before you is a glistening path of golden light, and it beckons to you to toss aside your fears and take a chance. Are you brave enough to follow it? To follow your heart? Are you bold enough, great warrior of the light, to skip happily down a road which you know leads to paradise, but the end of which you cannot readily see? Wide open it’s embarkation point, and it looks so inviting, so devoid of barriers and tolls.

It costs you nothing to take this road, other than your weariness, doubts and pain. And so begins your journey to whatever lies ahead.

Would it surprise you to learn that you are already walking on this path, and that you have been for quite some time? For lifetimes, truly; for hundreds, if not thousands of years. It’s been so tedious, and you are thirsty, your shoes are worn, your clothing tattered. Yet in your heart you know with stunning inner clarity that the effort you are making to reach your destination is ever so worth the trouble!

Sense the pressure of your childrens’ hands pressed warmly against yours. Look to the left and see your mothers and your fathers and the long line of grandparents and great-great-grandparents who have walked the earth before you. Glance to the right and smile a bright smile at your dear neighbors and friends. You are all together. United as One, which, all in all, is how it ought to be. How it was in the beginning and how it shall continue to be, forevermore. All united as one heart, one soul, one unstoppable force.

You are being called by Creator to be his and hers eyes and ears and hands. You are asked to to be both the artist and the builder – your hands working as their hands, to wield the paintbrush and dig the foundation. It is you who are entrusted to design the color palette and lay the first stone of what is set to be an impossible beautiful new world. This is a world without war. It is to be a world without hatred and violence and injustice.

Oh, and yes, in actuality there shall still be lack, except that this lack shall not be an illusion, but a reality. Yes, a reality! For in this world there shall exist a lack of famine, disease, inequality, injustice, confinement and pain. The new world is a world in which all creatures great and small exist in fairness, each with plenty of clean water to drink. Each with nutritious and untainted foods to eat and jeweled robes upon their backs-reflective of the vibrant and multifaceted colors of their soul. Imagine this place to be populous, thriving and abuzz with activity.

See yourself living there. Imagine what you shall do with your days. What does it mean to you personally, to be living your life-purpose and doing it outside the boundaries of your old, gilded cage? How does it feel to have kicked off the shackles?

And therefore you walk on, brave warrior, your blistered feet set firm upon a glittering carpet of crystals and light. You know this light to be as golden-white and glowing as the heart of Creator themselves. Dear mother/father God, may they be blessed. They are by your side, every step of the way, on this journey without end. They are lighting the way home for you, so you may easily and clearly follow the path ahead.

Don’t you see, that you cannot possibly become lost? In fact, you are treading that path already, and it is absolutely the correct path. Your Mother and Father are guiding you home, so they might lovingly enfold you in their rapture.

As it they who gave you life. So go to them. With them, push onward towards the peaceful, rich existence you so rightfully deserve. You have fought for it, long and hard. It is with supreme confidence that you move on now, becoming one with each other. And when you reach the Golden City, you shall be met by all of those who walked before you. You shall be gifted with a cool drink and a lush bouquet of roses with no thorns. Then you shall sing and dance beneath the stars.

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: IS THE NEW AGE REALLY HERE?
4/12/2013 5:57:50 PM

Video: UFOs Over Cork, Ireland

Posted on YouTube by UFODisclosureIreland - April 10, 2013

Stephen: These orange orbs are exactly like the one that Anthony and I saw when we were house-sitting on the south-eastern coast of Australia, some 3.5 hours south of Sydney, about four years ago. Thanks to Nick.

As UFODisclosureIreland writes: “This amazing footage scrubs every explanation out the window. These very heavily lit powered craft caught UFODI attention and needed to be shown! Antishake is stabalized and the footage is (AWESOME) Source: Naktis Ireland


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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RE: IS THE NEW AGE REALLY HERE?
4/13/2013 2:25:36 AM
From Wes Annac's personal blog:

Apparent “Archons” and the Desire to be Deceived

[12Apr2013]

I would again like to write-out how I’m feeling on this day, because if I don’t I will likely find myself wanting to hide away from this overall movement I’m blessed to be a part of. Looking around on the internet and at various posts apparently aimed at spreading awareness, I see that negativity is still being flaunted and forces who would love to be in the collective spotlight are being allotted that spotlight with every bit of attention we continue to give them.

I am of the firm belief that we are entering an age where negativity and deceit of any kind are things of the past.

I am not of the belief that we are being deceived (only in certain instances are we), led away from discernment or intelligence, or existing under the conditions we are because some negative extraterrestrial race fashioned them to be the way they are. Yes, the “dark cabals” as they have been called have for centuries, engineered societies that were and are only meant to serve them and be in their best interests. I am realizing that more and more every day as I see just how orchestrated this current society is.

Yes, control has been pushed onto us and its control that we don’t accept, nor should we. Yes, the cabals have “learned the ropes” from negative ET races (specifically the Annunaki and negative factions of the Zeta race) and from lower astral beings who’s influence, we’re told, is diminishing by the moment. Yes, a lot has happened and continues to happen that, when becoming aware of, could potentially change our perspective and make us feel as if we must sleep with one eye open.

I guess I could say I’m worried that as this awareness is being raised, the positive aspects of this entire movement could be swept under the rug in favor of what sounds the most sensationalist or what will grab the most attention.

I’m also beginning to see that deceit (or rather, a perceived need to be deceived) and negativity are still alive in the minds of even plenty of awakening souls who still see the need to judge others, bring deceit to the forefront of our perspective, give credit to apparent “Archons” where no credit is due, etc. and I worry that this could have more of a destructive effect than is perhaps intended.

Call this a personal bias if you will, but from the moment I heard talk and glamorization of “Archons” I felt that we were being misled about them. It seems that the very subject of off-world entities has taken a left turn with the introduction of apparent Archons, and I’ve seen so much “information” about them specifically that, with all due respect to those who flaunt their existence, seems to be misinformation.

An example would be that Archons have apparently constructed the “veil of forgetfulness” we currently exist under.

Sorry, but I refuse to believe that any service-to-self-based race has been given such control of my existence, and I am of the firm belief that we have established such a veil for us to exist under so that we would have an excellent opportunity for spiritual growth. I notice the theme of that belief and many others related to the Archons, which is that aspects of our existence that we are completely in control of have actually been constructed and are controlled by them.

Do you see where your sense of personal power is taken away? In my opinion, whoever is behind the misinformation related to Archons (not those who unknowingly pass-on such misinformation thinking it is correct, but those who thought it up in the first place) have wanted us to relate star people to negative Archons and get us to believe sheer lies about our existence and how our lower dimensional experience has been established.

I think I’ve made my views on the “Archons” sufficiently clear, and that subject is just one facet of the overall seeming-desire to feel as if we are being deceived or controlled, the results of which have been directed plenty of times in the past at those who simply wish to assist humanity.

I think that overall, the mechanism to rebel or build-up a figure to then believe is controlling us so that we can rebel against it or “spread awareness” about it, is still strongly prevalent in the awakening public and I think that we will hold ourselves back if we are unable to keep our perceived need for rebellion in check.

Yes, raising awareness is indeed important and a sharpened sense of discernment will do you well, but there is a clear difference between raising awareness and existing under an archetype of constant belief that someone, somewhere, is attempting to deceive you.

A small collective of intelligent, rich families who were given assistance from negative off-world forces (not Archons, in my view) and negative Earthly astral forces have established our society as it is today, and we have long awoken to what they have done and we are now taking action. As an aspect of this action-taking, plenty of us who are here strongly feel it our mission to help the collective awaken and to spread as much positivity and as many good vibrations as possible so that we can help the Earth to evolve.

We cannot do that if a stranglehold of cries of deceit flood and permeate the collective conscious and subconscious, and this is one reason I am finding it difficult to “move around” within some facets of the awakening community at present. To some who work to diligently spread awareness of all the cabals have done, our actions tend to be seen as “new agey” or “silly” and we’re made into naïve characters who Live in bubbly, sunny worlds and purposely choose to remain unaware of the awful actions of the cabals under the guise of “ascending”.

If I hear one more person suggest we “ditch the fluffy bunnies and get real” then I am going to seriously lose some faith in the awakening public. When was it decided that only awareness of the bad that has happened and the resulting paranoia and assumption of deceit everywhere one goes was to be prevalent within us? When was it decided that, simply because we have awakened and learned things some people wouldn’t want to learn, we were to start looking at others with a still-positive perspective as if they were “fluffy bunny-new agers”? Does it not seem just a bit judgmental to do so?

When was it decided that we were to flaunt apparent negative extraterrestrial entities to whom we give nearly all the credit for the establishment of our existence, and then in nearly the same breath, criticize others for still having a positive perspective?

To me, it seems that we are continuing to give our power away; both by looking for deceit everywhere we go while criticizing others who don’t unendingly search for such deceit, and by allowing ourselves to think that negative entities have been in charge of establishing aspects of our existence that, if so, would not have been designed for our ultimate spiritual growth and would have only been designed to keep us in states of unawareness and subservience.

I’m never going to believe that Archons have any control over my existence, and I hardly believe in their existence at all as they seem designed to display extraterrestrials in a certain light as well as deceive us about our soul growth and the reasons we are on this Earth under the perceived limitations we are.

Some could say I am looking for deceit by saying all of this but mind you, I am not the one who thought these beings up in the first place and have certainly not went far out of my way to say any of this. In a certain sense, I almost feel as if this writing was provoked and again, I came very close to simply shutting down today rather than writing it. I am not looking for deceit, but will point it out if I see it without going out of my way to seek it out and express it to others.

I am going to continue to affirm positivity, perform Lightwork, and do everything else that apparently makes me a “new ager”. I’ve experienced so much crushing negativity before that I can happily refrain from assuming myself only to be interested in rainbows and unicorns and yet, you will catch me proclaiming and passing along some of the mushiest positivity that can be mustered up.

Why? Because we need positivity back on this planet and its absence is one of the strongest ways we have been led away from our collective and individual power. I see an apparent absence of positivity (or perhaps an absence of an opened heart) in some of those whose minds fill the void by searching for and proclaiming constant deceit, and I ask all of you not to be drawn in by the false rein that the cabals and the beings who have employed them would love for you to believe they still have on this Earth.

As long as you believe an Archon has control of your existence in any way, you are allowing yourself to be deceived and controlled by the very forces you would otherwise be working to raise awareness of. As long as you feel that positivity translates into being naïve, you will forever enforce a veil between this realm and the higher dimensions where, guess what, unending and mushy positivity is constantly prevalent.

Oh, I cannot imagine how some people would feel if they were given a pass into the fifth dimension for a day. They may come back saying every Ascended Master, Galactic soul and Angel is too fluffy for their taste!

To wrap this up, it’s time to let ourselves see that positivity and genuine spirituality are here with us and that the fading influence of negativity, deceit, control and all who have fed those things is just that; fading. The sooner we can realize that, the sooner we can lighten the collective vibrations sufficiently and speed-up this entire collective evolution.

Wes Annac – Increasingly ready for paranoia to transform into collective cooperation, understanding, and harmony

WesAnnac.com

AquariusParadigm.com

Image: http://www.positivemotivation.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Life-is-good-picture-Quotes.jpg

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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RE: IS THE NEW AGE REALLY HERE?
4/13/2013 9:59:23 AM

Pope faces tough decisions as Vatican reforms loom


Associated Press/Alessandro Di Meo, pool - Pope Francis, right, meets with Mozambique's Prime Minister Alberto Vaquina on the occasion of their private audience in the pontiff's library, at the Vatican, Thursday, April 11, 2013. (AP Photo/Alessandro Di Meo, pool)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has spent much of his first month as pope charming ordinary Catholics with his ordinary yet extraordinary papal ways and making clear he is very much the boss when it comes to decisions as small as the shoes he wears to where he rests his head at night.

In the coming months, he'll face decisions of far greater import as he responds to demands from cardinals in far-flung dioceses and Vatican officials at home for an overhaul of the Holy See bureaucracy, the dysfunctional family business he inherited one month ago Saturday.

Given Francis' governing style and track record, it's likely he'll make these choices with an eye to efficiency, and very much alone.

Prelates are demanding term limits on Vatican jobs to prevent priests from becoming career bureaucrats. They want consolidated financial reports to remove the cloak of secrecy from the Vatican's murky finances. And they want regular Cabinet meetings where department heads actually talk to one another to make the Vatican a help to the church's evangelizing mission, not a hindrance.

"It just doesn't work either very quickly or very efficiently," U.S. Cardinal Francis George, the archbishop of Chicago, said. "Take marriage cases: People shouldn't have to be asked to wait three, four, five, six years to get a response" for a request for an annulment.

Francis is meeting daily with department heads and on Friday made an impromptu visit to the secretariat of state, getting a handle on a government that was last reformed by Pope Paul VI a half-century ago and was shown by the leaks of papal documents last year to be infected by power struggles, incompetence and sheer ungovernability.

He has made one Vatican appointment so far, naming a member of his namesake Franciscan order to the important No. 2 spot at the Vatican's congregation for religious orders. His most eagerly-watched appointment has yet to come: that of the Vatican secretary of state, who runs the day-to-day administration of the Holy See. Currently, the position is held by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, a 78-year-old canon lawyer whose administrative shortcomings have been blamed for many of the Vatican's current problems today.

George Weigel, a papal biographer who interviewed then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio last May for his new book "Evangelical Catholicism," said Francis understands well the problems of the Curia, or Vatican bureaucracy. He said Bergoglio "displayed a shrewd, but not cynical, grasp of just what was wrong with the church's central bureaucratic machinery, and why."

"I think we can expect the new pope to lead the church in a purification and renewal of the episcopate, the priesthood, the religious life, and the curia, because he understands that scandal, corruption, and incompetence are impediments" to the mission of spreading the faith, Weigel wrote in a recent essay.

Francis' austere style and track record governing the Jesuit order in his native Argentina and then the archdiocese of Buenos Aires has given reformers hope: Several cardinals have cited Francis' record as evidence that he has what it takes to make tough, unpopular decisions when necessary.

Bergoglio was named provincial of the Jesuits in Argentina in 1973 at the very young age of 36, and by all indications clashed with more left-leaning members of the order who were increasingly taking up the call of liberation theology, the belief that Christ's teachings justify fights against social injustices. His six-year term also spanned the initial years of the 1976-1983 military junta, which kidnapped and killed thousands of people in a "dirty war" to eliminate leftist opponents. Two of Bergoglio's own priests were kidnapped, but later freed after his intervention.

"He knows how to govern," George said. "He's done all those in very difficult circumstances."

In the 2010 book "The Jesuit," written by his authorized biographer, Bergoglio explained his decision-making process, saying he always discounts his first ideas because they're "always wrong."

"One can ask for advice but, in the end, one must decide alone," he said. Doing so means making mistakes, and Bergoglio acknowledged he had made plenty in his lifetime.

"That's why the important thing is to ask God," he said.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who has become something of the ringleader of the reform group, said he had high hopes that Francis would turn the Holy See into a model of good governance given his background and no nonsense style.

"Sometimes in the past the curia has been an example of what not to do, instead of what to do," Dolan said in an interview. "We need to look to the Holy See and the Roman Curia as a model of good governance, of honesty, of simplicity, of frugality, of transparency, of candor, of raw Gospel service, of a lack of careerism, of people who are driven by virtue."

Dolan suggested that one crucial area of reform would be imposing term limits on Vatican bureaucrats to prevent them from becoming lifers. Such a move would both reduce the "careerism" that afflicts many a Vatican bureaucrat while also encouraging bishops around the world to lend Rome their best men knowing that they would be gone for only a few years, not life.

"You need a change in philosophy, in the guiding spirit," Dolan said.

Dolan said there was also no reason why more laymen and women couldn't be brought into the Vatican bureaucracy, particularly in the Vatican's offices for families or laity. And there's no reason not to trim back a government that has "mushroomed" over the years, he said. Already, Italian news reports have said Francis is mulling a reorganization and streamlining of the Vatican secretary of state.

Archbishop Claudio Mario Celli, who heads the Vatican's social communications office, wants greater communication within the various Vatican departments, including regularly scheduled meetings of department heads.

"We need a more synergetic activity," Celli said in an interview. "If we want to have a more effective service in the church, we need to have a symphonic approach."

George, the archbishop of Chicago, is seeking greater financial transparency. He is on the board of 15 cardinals who meet regularly to go over the Vatican's budget.

"The little bit I know comes from finding out what goes on during those meetings," George said. He called for greater financial transparency within the Vatican itself, including instituting consolidated financial reporting.

"How do you run an efficient government if the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing?" George said.

George dismissed speculation in the Italian media that the Vatican bank, the Institute for Works of Religion, might be closed as part of Francis' reform, as it's long been a source of scandal.

Doing so would be financial suicide for the Vatican, since it currently provides the pope with about 50 million euros ($65 million) a year in investment income using, among other things, assets of its account holders.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said any speculation about the IOR's possible closure "is purely hypothetical and isn't based on any believable or concrete facts."


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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