The Lefebvrist fiasco was a microcosm of the complex set of administrative and managerial problems that Benedict must confront and resolve, if his intellectual lucidity and pastoral good sense are not to be obscured by the incapacities and incompetence of the Curia, the reform of which he was expected to undertake by those who elected him in 2005.

The Curia exists for one reason: to give effect to the will of the Bishop of Rome, who is the source of both legislative authority and policy initiative in the universal Church. As Canon 360 of the Code of Canon Law puts it, "The Supreme Pontiff usually conducts the business of the universal Church through the Roman Curia, which acts in his name and with his authority for the good and for the service of the [local] Churches." As in all governmental bureaucracies, of course, stated rationale and actual performance are not always aligned. For the Curia not infrequently mimics the behaviour of every other bureaucratised power structure on the planet. It staples a salute to the leader to its collective forehead even as it pursues its own interests and intrigues, all the while attempting to bring the leader around to "the way we do things here". It is often thought that popes have a unique freedom of action. The fact is that the exercise of papal governance is deeply affected, for good or ill, by the competence of the Curia and its senior officials. Contemporary popes can and do go over or around the Curia to shape the international debate, as John Paul II and Benedict XVI have shown. Yet there is no governing the Catholic Church over or around the Curia. So a great deal depends on how successful a given pope is in selecting the Curia's leaders and guiding their work.

Most of what the world thinks it knows about the Curia is, in fact, mistaken. It is, for example, a remarkably small operation, given that it is the administrative centre of a human community with 1.2 billion members living in every corner of the globe. Among its 3,000 or so employees, perhaps 40 at the most have real operational or decision-making roles. The rest are worker-bees - often very able, polyglot worker-bees with advanced degrees - whose task is to serve what are known in Curia-speak as "the superiors": the two or three heads of each of the curial "dicasteries", which are the rough equivalents of cabinet departments.