"Popes come, popes go; the curia remains." Perhaps no one better understands the structure of the Roman bureaucracy than TR. He seriously studied it like no other.  Inside the Vatican, is preeminent among his investigative studies.  But, alas, at heart, he himself is a greenhouse cleric. No bigger vision than reforming the curia!? Removing it altogether is not on his clerical horizon. 

"Nor will filling the Vatican with progressives solve the problem..." Progressive clerics?  "In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." Progressives, conservatives all make only cosmetic changes.  Francis attempts to make the RCC user friendly but remains rigid in "reading the signs of the times."  If Jesus could upend Judaism by rejecting the law of proportionality, an eye for an eye...and making man absolute over the sabbath, etc the RCC resists the signs of the times for fear of relativism not revolution. No score on sex abuse?  No women to humanize the moribund COC?