Rome: Pope Francis has sacked the head of the Vatican office that handles sex abuse cases, just days after he released Australian cardinal George Pell to return home to face charges of historical sexual assault.
The developments underscored how the Catholic Church's sex abuse crisis has caught up with Francis, threatening to tarnish his legacy.
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Impact of George Pell's charges ripple through Vatican City
The bells are ringing in Vatican City, but this is not a day of celebration for Cardinal George Pell, says Europe correspondent Nick Miller.
Francis on Saturday declined to renew the mandate of German cardinal Gerhard Mueller as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that processes and evaluates all cases of priests accused of raping or molesting minors.
Most incumbents keep the post until they retire, which in Mueller's case would have been in six years. Francis named Mueller's deputy, Monsignor Luis Ladaria Ferrer, a 73-year-old Spanish Jesuit, to run the powerful office instead.
Ladaria is said by those who know him to be a soft-spoken person who shuns the limelight. Mueller, by contrast, often appears in the media.
"They speak the same language and Ladaria is someone who is meek. He does not agitate the Pope and does not threaten him," said a priest who works in the Vatican and knows both Mueller and Ladaria, asking not to be named.
During Mueller's five-year term, the congregation amassed a 2000-case backlog and came under blistering criticism from Irish abuse survivor Marie Collins, who had been tapped by Francis in 2014 to advise the church on caring for abuse victims and protecting children from paedophile priests.
Collins resigned from the papal commission in March, citing the "unacceptable" level of resistance from Mueller's office to heeding the commission's proposals.
In May, Francis said her criticism of the slow pace in processing abuse cases was justified and announced he was adding more staff to handle the overload.
Earlier this year he also named Cardinal Sean O'Malley as a member of the congregation in hopes of ensuring better cooperation.
Mueller is one of several cardinals in the Vatican who have publicly sparred with the Pope.
In 2015 both he and Cardinal Pell were among 13 cardinals who signed a secret letter to the Pope complaining that a meeting of bishops discussing family issues was stacked in favour of liberals. The letter was leaked, embarrassing the signatories.
"Clearly, the Pope and Cardinal Mueller have not been on the same page for five years," the priest said.
Mueller has criticised parts of a 2016 papal treatise called "Amoris Laetitia" (The Joy of Love), a cornerstone document of Francis' attempt to make the 1.2 billion-member Church more inclusive and less condemning.
In it, Francis called for a Church that is less strict and more compassionate towards any "imperfect" members, such as those who divorced and remarried, saying "no one can be condemned forever".
"This gives the Pope the chance to finally place his own man in a very important spot," said the Reverend James Martin, an editor-at-large for the Catholic magazine America and a consultant to the Vatican's Secretariat for Communication. "For many admirers of [Pope] Benedict [XVI], Cardinal Mueller was the last link to Benedict's way of doing things."
Taken together, the departure of two arch-conservatives is a serious setback to critics of Francis. They do not see the Pope as an avuncular pastor but instead fear that he is a deft political operator in the midst of a house-cleaning of conservatives.
During the Pope's trip to Philadelphia in September 2015, Mueller said "it's not possible" for violators of church doctrine on divorce, homosexuality or abortion to be welcomed completely back into the church. "It's not an academic doctrine, it's the word of God," he said.
Asked in the interview whether the Pope was as tough a boss as many critics in the Vatican suggested, Mueller grinned and said: "It's a secret."
When it was noted that his staying in his job seemed like a promising sign, Mueller laughed.
AP, Reuters, New York Times