Who Does Pope Leo XIV Trust?

What Archbishop Cordileone's appointment—and the rumours surrounding Bishop Erik Varden—may reveal about the Pope's emerging priorities.

Rumours were swirling at the weekend that the Prefect for the Dicastery of Divine Worship, Cardinal Arthur Roche would soon be replaced with the Trappist monk Erik Varden who has served as Bishop of Trondheim since 2020. Bishop Varden is a highly respected academic who was, in 2002, admitted to Mount St Bernard Abbey, a Trappist monastery near Coalville in Leicestershire. The Trappists (officially the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, OCSO) spirituality is centred on the radical pursuit of God through silence, prayer, simplicity and conversion of life. Their vocation is not primarily to do things for the Church, but to be before God. The monastery is therefore not an escape from the world, but a place where the search for God becomes absolute. Varden's standing in Rome appears to be on the rise, reflected most clearly in Pope Leo's decision to entrust him with preaching the Lenten Spiritual Exercises to the Roman Curia this year.

I first brought Roche’s potential move to your attention at the end of March, when it emerged that he was rumoured to become the patron of the Order of Malta. We know Roche has not been happy with Pope Leo’s failure to enforce the trajectory of Traditiones Custodes to eliminate the Traditional Latin Mass completely. This most forcefully came after Pope Leo’s letter to the French Bishops in which he spoke of a “painful wound” and asked for concrete ways of ensuring a generous inclusion of those attached to the Vetus Ordo (literally, the old rite). The language is measured, but it is not casual. It recognises that these communities are not diminishing into irrelevance, on the contrary, their continued presence and in some places their growth, has become part of the pastoral landscape that bishops must reckon with. The request for concrete solutions carried weight because it assumed that the existing arrangements (i.e. Traditiones Custodes) have not resolved the difficulty. Obviously this pretty much repudiated — or at least seriously undermined Traditiones Custodes and there were a number of unconfirmed reports that Cardinal Roche was privately angered by the letter and felt that the Pope had made him look like an idiot (if I’m honest, I don’t think he needed Pope Leo’s help for that).

The point is that it is possible trace a gradual change of direction. Pope Leo’s moving at a glacial pace and that has discouraged a lot of us. But if Varden was appointed as Prefect of the DDW, this would mark a real improvement and give faithful Catholics everywhere something to celebrate. I must stress that this is just rumour at the moment however. The current rumours appear to originate with French and Spanish Catholic media, principally Tribune Chrétienne, with InfoVaticana subsequently amplifying them. Both report that Varden's name is circulating in Roman circles in connection with the Dicastery for Divine Worship, but neither cites named Vatican officials or documentary evidence. They are explicitly describing curial speculation, not reporting a confirmed decision.

I do think that appointing Varden would mean Pope Leo wants someone with more theological depth and pastoral seriousness than an aptitude for Vatican politics. If Leo wanted Divine Worship to move away from the highly legalistic and often polarising style associated with Roche, Varden would represent a very different kind of prefect, less of an administrator and more of a theologian and spiritual father.

But at this stage this is just speculation. Something good and concrete that did happen this weekend was that the five-year terms of the Members appointed in June 2021 have now concluded for The Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.