VATICAN-WATCHING has something in common with Sovietology, and indeed there are some Italian journalists who have excelled equally at both. In each world, public statements have often been veiled in arcane and abstruse language, so that any plain, blunt speaking comes as a refreshing break. And in both worlds, you have to study personnel changes closely to see what is going on.

Pope Francis has just named 15 new "voting cardinals" to the body of prelates who will elect his successor, and his choices represent a further dilution of the power of the Italian bureaucracy which has hitherto constituted the hard core of global Catholicism. The new cardinal-electors hail from a total of 14 countries; only five come from Europe, and the European choices are somewhat unconventional. The only Italian is Monsignor Francesco Montenegro, who has joined the pope in visiting Lampedusa, an island where desperate victims of human trafficking and people smuggling come ashore in huge numbers.

Ths Asia-Pacific region is strongly represented, with cardinals from the mainly Buddhist lands of Thailand and Myanmar, plus Tonga and New Zealand, and, perhaps most interestingly, there is one from Vietnam, a country with which the holy see has no diplomatic relations. Religious freedom-watchers regard Vietnam as one of the world's more serious violators of basic liberties, although the situation is said to be volatile and changing in unpredictable ways. Of the two American agencies which monitor freedom of belief, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) thinks Vietnam should be considered a "country of particular concern"—in other words, an egregious violator—while the State Department used to place Vietnam in that category, but has not done so since 2006. Vietnam is at least willing to discuss the subject of religious freedom with the United States and the European Union; it has allowed a panel of EU experts on the topic to tour the country and offer opinions.

The State Department describes Catholicism, with 6m followers out of a total Vietnamese population of 93m, as a growing force in that country. Secretary of State John Kerry, who first went to Vietnam as a naval patrol boat commander, has shown his solidarity with Vietnamese Catholics (and tried to assure sceptics that he cares about religious freedom) by attending mass in Ho Chi Minh City. USCIRF, as part of a litany of complaints, recently noted an incident in which two Catholics were arrested for trying to repair a shrine, prompting a public prayer vigil by supporters demanding their release, into which police opened fire.

But the flock headed by Cardinal-elect Pierre Nguyen Van Nhon is a resilent one, and they remember much worse persecutions than that. At least two Vietnamese "martyrs"—clerics who died at the hands of the communists—are on their way to being recognised as saints. And according to people who know the religious scene in Vietnam, the country's Catholics are a highly disciplined community, and by European standards they take traditional Catholic teaching seriously. A Vietnamese Catholic who has an abortion is as likely to be rebuked by her fellow Catholics as by priests or bishops.

Pope Francis is obviously quite serious about curbing the Roman bureaucracy and giving more power to local churches and bishops in all their diversity. He did some plain speaking about the flaws of the bureaucracy just before Christmas, and he now says he will convene a meeting on reforming the curia in early February. In some parts of the world, this devolution of power may give Catholicism a somewhat liberal flavour. Only a couple of weeks ago, a Belgian bishop broke new ground by saying the church should find some way of recognising stable same-sex unions. But that liberal flavour will not be evident everywhere.