Pope Francis makes first appointment

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis on Saturday named a Spanish Franciscan to be the No. 2 at the Vatican’s office for religious orders, his first appointment to the Vatican bureaucracy badly in need of a shakeup.

Jose Rodriguez, who also was elevated to archbishop, replaces U.S. Archbishop Joseph Tobin, who was transferred from the high-ranking Vatican post to a Midwestern U.S. archdiocese following his efforts to mediate tensions between the Vatican and American nuns, who in the view of theological conservatives had become too secular and political.

Rodriquez, 60, is an outsider to the Vatican administration and comes from the world of religious orders, like Francis, who is a Jesuit.

Rodriguez is well-thought of among the orders, and last year was elected president of an international association that gathers the heads of the male orders.