What could turn out to be a botched appointment in Beijing has already been mentioned - it, too, was probably the result of Curial foolishness, in this case the willingness of the Curial China Lobby to bend over backwards in order to establish formal diplomatic relations with the Chinese communist regime. Benedict XVI has been generally supportive of the tougher line taken by the feisty cardinal of Hong Kong, Joseph Zen. But it seems likely that the pope was not sufficiently briefed before he made the Beijing episcopal appointment because the Curia hadn't done its homework adequately.

By contrast, when a nuncio knows his job, speaks the local language, consults intelligently and has a strategic vision, Benedict has shown a willingness to initiate bold and effective change. The Anglophone hierarchy of Canada, for example, has been remade according to the John Paul II/Benedict XVI model of dynamic orthodoxy in a relatively brief period of time.

It is unlikely that Joseph Ratzinger accepted his election thinking of himself as another Leo XIII, who created the modern papacy and died in 1903, after a 25-year reign, at the ripe old age of 93. Always conscious of his health, Benedict XVI in all likelihood imagined his as a short pontificate. Thus the question of Curial reform could be deferred until he was gone, for several reasons. He knew that bold administrative restructuring was not his forte. And given the assumption of a short papacy, he probably thought it papal bad manners to saddle his successor with a long bench of youngish, senior Curial officials just getting adjusted to a new system. So he would find someone he had worked with comfortably in the past - Cardinal Bertone - to keep the machinery running, while he would concentrate on the work he knew he did well - the compelling proclamation of Christian truth to both the Church and the world.

Yet as the events of recent months have made painfully clear, Curial incapacity can impede and even damage the evangelical mission of the most intelligent pope. It was nothing short of a tragedy that a world-class Catholic theologian like Ratzinger, who had spent 50 years explaining Christianity's debt to Judaism to his Christian co-believers, should find himself saddled with the charge that he had reconciled a Holocaust denier to the Church. Yet that is what happened, because no one in whom Benedict XVI reposed trust had the sense to find out about Richard Williamson, and because the Curial culture of the day did not encourage those who did know the facts to warn the superiors. The entire Lefebvrist mess was preventable: if the pope had insisted throughout his pontificate on competence and had taken forceful measures to rectify incompetence; if those whose sole purpose is to give effect to the pope's will had done their jobs better; or if Benedict had reached outside the apostolic palace to take private soundings as to the likely effects of his gesture of reconciliation.