Some in the entourage end up in key jobs; others operate as a kind of shadow cabinet, vetting choices and enforcing doctrine.
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who now heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican body responsible for enforcing doctrine, said in a 2002 interview that "it would be a real discrimination of woman if she is considered as apt for the diaconate, but not for the [priesthood] or [as a bishop]".
But while he often, as a cardinal, used his clout to enforce doctrine and sideline clergy members whose views diverged from his own, he seemed less willing at that time to aggressively pursue sexual abusers.
But after a seemingly endless series of scandals, the 85-year-old who so ably enforced doctrine for his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, seemingly came to understand that only a new pope, one with far greater energies than he, could lead a global church and clean house inside the hierarchy at its helm.
As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican department that enforces doctrinal orthodoxy, he sensibly delegated managerial work.Admittedly, John Paul liked to bypass bureaucracy and bequeathed a mess to his successor.
Instead, they demand government support in enforcing Catholic doctrine.
In an era when Europe had been torn asunder by warfare between Catholic and Protestant kings, he set out the revolutionary idea that the state should hold back from adjudicating or enforcing religious doctrine.
In 1999 an inquiry about Father Maciel — who had been investigated in the 1950s for possible drug abuse but cleared — was shelved, reportedly by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was in charge of enforcing church doctrine.
After a career of spreading the word of Socialism and enforcing Soviet doctrine, Mr. Shakhnazarov was pulled into Mr. Gorbachev's inner circle in 1989 as the Soviet leader struggled to reform the Communist Party while maneuvering between conservatives, who wanted no part of reform, and liberals, who wanted to break with Communism.
He said gay Catholics were particularly distressed in 1999 when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Vatican group whose members enforce church doctrine, silenced Sister Jeannine Gramick and the Rev. Robert Nugent of New Ways Ministry, an organization in Maryland that ministers to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Catholics.
