New Pontifical Council: in the midst of scandal, the New Movements more than ever the Great White Hope of the Vatican

On 28th June, Pope Benedict XVI announced the foundation of the first new Vatican organisation of his reign, indeed the first of its kind to be created in a quarter of a century. This year has seen what has probably been one of the most difficult periods in the history of the modern papacy. A beleaguered Vatican has struggled to respond to accusations from around the world relating to the paedophile priests scandal and attempts to hush it up. The Pontiff himself has been implicated - both when he was an archbishop in Germany and subsequently Prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - in moves to save the Church's face and the skins of those accused. The Catholic hierarchy - and even the Vatican itself - is facing high profile legal action in a number of countries of the world. This is a scandal that is likely to go on causing serious difficulties for the Church and undermining its authority for years to come.

Against this background, the announcement of a new Vatican body, marks an unexpected and bullish change of direction in the Ratzinger papacy - or perhaps a determined effort by Benedict XVI to get his pontificate back on message and achieve what he always had in mind.

The organisation will be known as the Pontifical Council for New Evangelisation and its principal aim will be a cause which was already an over-riding concern of Jozef Ratzinger when he was still the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - to combat the rising tide of secularism in Europe and the Americas, particularly in the former strongholds of Catholicism. The announcement is nothing less than a mission statement, responding as it does to new legislation which has come into force in recent month in traditionally Catholic countries. When visiting the pilgrimage centre of Fatima, Portugal, in May, in a speech to a crowd of half a million faithful, Benedict denounced the legalising of gay marriage in that country - it had just been signed into law by the President - as an 'insidious and dangerous' threat. In June a new liberal abortion law came into effect in Spain.

The creation of the new Vatican institution gives a clear signal that Pope Benedict's pontificate is back on track. A firm line has been drawn in the sand. But, in fact, this has been the Pontiff's aim from the start of his pontificate: the very choice of the name Benedict recalls the saint responsible for the re-Christianisation of Europe in a much earlier age. Just a day before his predecessor died, the then Cardinal Ratzinger delivered a speech condemning European secularism and analysing its historical roots. Significantly he chose Subiaco - the cradle of the Benedictine order - as the location for his statement. To underline its import still further, the occasion was his acceptance of the St Benedict Award for the promotion of life and the family in Europe.

The vehicle that Benedict has chosen for his new foundation is significant. The Pontifical Councils were created by John Paul II in the eighties in a major shakeup of Vatican structures. Their aim was to circumvent the lumbering bureaucracy of the Church's central government. The Councils were to be task-forces ready to strike instantly at any point of the globe at a word from the Pontiff - his praetorian guard. At the time there were 11 such organisations and, though many of them were based on existing bodies, each was concerned with an issue or group of particular concern to John Paul such as the Family, the Laity, Justice and Peace or - the only Council he created from scratch - Health Workers. It is a sign of the pro-active, practical nature that Benedict envisages for his new body that he has placed it within this category.

For anyone familiar with the New Catholic Movements, the term 'new evangelisation' will strike an immediate chord. As I pointed out in my book The Pope's Armada, first published in the United Kingdom in 1995, not only did this term become the rallying cry of Pope John Paul II's reign - a fact acknowledged by Pope Benedict in his speech announcing the foundation of the new Council - but it also became synonymous with the evangelising movements that were so dear to John Paul's heart. Vast papal rallies such as the World Youth Day and the Pope's Meeting with Families, which became the defining examples of the 'new evangelisation', were in fact based on similar events created by the New Movements.

There is every reason to believe that the formation of this new body in the Roman Curia signifies a central role for the movements in Pope Ratzinger's vision for the future of the Church. Firstly it was Ratzinger, theologian in chief of the reign of John Paul II, who provided the theological underpinning for the New Movements and their special bond with the papacy. According to the ranzingerian interpretation, only the Pope could recognise such new groups within the Church - as was the case with the mendicant orders of the Middle Ages - and thus at a stroke, he silenced the loud objections of local bishops who feared the disruptive influence of the Movements within the traditional structures of diocese and parish, and harnessed their tremendous power (both spiritual and material) to the throne of Peter. The movements and the papacy gave each other legitimacy and renewed force. If a new centralisation had been a key feature of the reign of John Paul, following the tendency to de-centralisation in the post-Conciliar years, Ratzinger had been its chief architect. The Movements had been placed firmly within this vision of Catholicism.

Secondly, when Benedict came to power, he talked repeatedly of a slimmed-down Church shorn of its dissenting or fringe members, but renewed in commitment and conviction: he seemed to be describing the New Movements. This was underlined when one of his first actions in office was to summon a meeting of these organisations for Pentecost 2005, identical to one of the largest and most significant gatherings of his predecessor's reign when that Pontiff met with the Movements in St Peter's Square on the feast of Pentecost 1998.

Thirdly, in the wake of the recent scandals in which the Catholic priesthood and even the hierarchy have been demonised by the press and in public opinion, this is the perfect moment to place lay movements centre-stage. Fifteen years ago, I pointed out in The Pope's Armada that John Paul II had sidelined the traditional religious orders, which he saw as rebellious and recalcitrant, in favour of the New Movements. Since then, these organisations have consolidated their position in the Vatican corridors of power, with members appointed to key roles in all the major Vatican bodies. On the other hand, many of those involved in the paedophile scandals have been members of the traditional religious orders. Indeed one of the most shocking and high-profile scandals of all involved Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, the Mexican founder of one of the newest religious orders, the Legionaries of Christ, much beloved of John Paul II. Not only was he addicted to prescription drugs and systematically sexually abused young boys for decades in the many seminaries he had set up to provide vocations to his order, but after his death in 2008, it turned out that he had secretly fathered children to at least two women. If ever there was a time it was in the Church's interest to switch attention from the clergy and religious and onto the laity, this is it.

Clearly the Movements are not unaware of the role they can play in improving the Church's image at this time of crisis. On 16th of May 2010, tens of thousands of their members converged on St Peter's Square for the Pope's traditional Sunday lunchtime appearance for the Angelus, to demonstrate their solidarity with the See of Peter. 200,000 members of the movements packed the Square in an orchestrated show of strength of which only these organisations are capable. The Pope was visibly moved and the press was impressed - dubbing the event Papa Day. And perhaps the Movements are also aware of a golden opportunity they have been offered to claim their position as 'The New Protagonists' of the Catholic Church, as they were designated in the title of a critical book written about them by a Rome-based theologian in the 1990s.

So it does not come as a huge surprise to discover a direct link between the new Council and the Movements. According to a report in the Italian daily Il Giornale written in April this year, accurately predicting the creation of the new Vatican organisation, it had first been suggested to Pope John Paul II in the early 1980s by Father Luigi Giussani, founder of the Communion and Liberation Movement. It was once again suggested just over a year ago to the current Pontiff by the highest placed member of that movement, Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Patriarch of Venice, who could well be a candidate for the next pope. This time the suggestion was seized on with enthusiasm by the Vatican's new incumbent. It is known that, while favourable to all the Movements, Pope Benedict has always found Communion and Liberation most congenial to his intellectual and traditionalist approach. He has remained supportive despite the organisation's sometimes questionable antics in Italian politics, especially in the 1990s, and was even instrumental in restoring good relations with Church's central government. It was Cardinal Ratzinger who represented the Vatican at the funeral of Father Giussani in 2005, presiding over the requiem mass and delivering the eulogy. The papal household is currently run by a group of women from Communion and Liberation's branch of consecrated members, the Memores Domini.

Till now, the New Movements have been lumped together with the rest of the Catholic laity under the aegis of the Pontifical Council for the Laity. Now it could be said that they finally have a Council tailored to their goals. It will be fascinating to watch the developments of the new body over the coming months as, against the disarray and scandal among the clergy and the hierarchy, the New Movements more than ever come into their own.