Management Survey Report On Church

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27874, 24 January 1956, Page 6

Management Survey Report On Church

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright)

(Rec. 8 p.m.) NEW YORK, Jan. 22. The Roman Catholic Church was “as efficient as any non-profit organisation in the world,’’ Mr Jackson Martindell, president of the American Institute of Management, said here today. He made the statement to a press conference after the release of a summary report of a management study of the Roman Catholic Church. Mr Martindell said that the report resulted from the work of “hundreds of researchers” and the gathering of material published in 30 languages. It represented the opinions of hundreds of people and statistics gathered by hundreds of people. The report said the recent elevation of Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini as Archbishop of Milan appeared “to be a step in the grooming of this important individual, -oerhaps ultimately for the highest office.” Mr Martindell predicted at the press conference that Archbishop Montini would “probably be the next Pope.” “If Pope Pius were to die in the present year that prediction would not come true,” he added. “If the Pope lives for some years, Archbishop Montini will have had an opportunity to become trained for the office. It takes more training to be a Pope, and a good one, than for any other office in the world.” Mr Martindell assigned an 88-point rating to the Roman Catholic Church, basing the estimate on a year-long study of its world-wide operations by the institute. The institute is a non-profit foundation with more than 15.000 individual members, including 5000 company presidents in the United . States and Canada. A spokesman said it aimed to improve management practices by comparative appraisals. Mr Martindell said that out of more than 4000 corporations and non-profit institutions analysed for efficiency since its founding in 1948. the institute had rated only three with 94 points and 17 with 90 points. “There isn’t very much difference between the Standard Oil Company, of New Jersey, and the Roman Catholic Church’s operations.” he said. “The only difference is that Standard produces oil, and the Church produces a way of life and a way of thought.”

Efficiency, he said, was based on the degree the Church had developed and put into practice administrative procedures which had demonstrated their worth over the centuries. He said that the study was the first management survey of the Roman Catholic Church in its 1900 years of existence. A complete management audit study of the church would be published in the autumn by Harper and Bros. The study termed Pope Pius XII “the world’s hardest working ruler.” “No other ruler, temporal or spiritual, adheres to such an astonishing schedule,” the report said. The church received a perfect 1000 rating for “social function.” “Certainly no other religious society attempts such broad services both to its members and to the world community. The Roman Church is truly Ca'tholic,” the study said. On fiscal policies, the report said, “no other organisation does so much with so little.” However, it said that the church should capitalise on the world-wide trend toward industrialism and toward the steady accumulation of wealth in corporate hands. The study said it was concerned most by the advanced age of cardinals and the fact that they so largely seemed to represent an Italian clique that perhaps thought more in terms of a “restoration of the Holy Roman Empire than a strong episcopate in the provinces.” The study said the Pope took a major step in the right direction in 1945 when out of 32 new cardinals he named, the majority were not Italians.