Australian Bishop Part of 9-Man Panel Tasked by Pope Francis to Initiate Reforms in the Catholic Church

Pope Francis appointed over the weekend a 9-man panel tasked with providing him advice on how to reform the Roman Catholic Church. The 9 members are mostly non-Vatican officials, which is indicative of how the new pope values to input of other church officials outside the Holy See.

Included in the 9-member body is Archbishop of Sydney George Pell. The other members are Cardinals Francisco Javier Errazuriz Ossa, the retired archbishop of Santiago, Chile; Oswald Gracias, archbishop of Mumbai, India; Reinhard Marx, the archbishop of Munich and Freising, Germany; Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, archbishop of Kinshasa, Congo, Sean Patrick O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston; Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga, archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras; Monsignor Marcello Semeraro, bishop of Albano and Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, president of the Vatican City state administration.

Msgr Semeraro is the secretary of the panel and Cardinal Maradiaga is the group coordinator.

The announcement is in response for call to reform the Catholic Church, weakened by the sex abuse cases as well as the Vatican bureaucracy.

Among the top priority of the panel is to study the possible amendment of Pastor Bonus on the Roman Curia, the apostolic constitution issued in 1988 by Pope John Paul II. The Pastor Bonus is the blueprint for overseeing the Vatican City State and the Holy See, spelling out the work and jurisdiction of the congregations, pontifical councils and other offices, called the Roman Curia, which governs the Catholic Church.

The permanent advisory group will hold its first session on Oct 1-3, 2013.

The election of Pope Francis, who was Buenos Aires archbishop, as pontiff is seen as the cardinals' expression of anger or disagreement with the Italian clergy who run the Curia, even if the early favourites were Milan Archbishop Angelo Scola and Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet.