Scandal at the Vatican...
A new
book, seen by Associated Press, recounts the mismanagement within the Vatican
and efforts to thwart Pope Francis' reforms
The Vatican's new leaks scandal intensified on
Tuesday as a book detailed the mismanagement and internal resistance that has
been thwarting Pope Francis' financial reform efforts.
Citing
confidential documents, it exposed millions of pounds in potential lost rental
revenue, the scandal of the Vatican's saint-making machine, greedy monsignors
and a professional-style break-in at the Vatican.
Merchants in
the Temple, by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi is due out on Thursday but an
advance copy was obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. Its publication, and
that of a second book, come days after the Vatican arrested two people involved with the Pope's financial
reform commission in an investigation into stolen documents.
The Vatican on
Monday described the books as "fruit of a grave betrayal of the trust
given by the pope, and, as far as the authors go, of an operation to take
advantage of a gravely illicit act of handing over confidential
documentation."
"Publications of this
nature do not help in any way to establish clarity and truth, but rather
generate confusion and partial and tendentious conclusions," the Vatican
said.
The books mark a new phase in
the so-called Vatileaks scandal. The saga began in 2012 with an earlier Nuzzi
expose, peaked with the conviction of Pope Benedict XVI's butler on charges he
supplied Nuzzi with stolen documents, and ended a year later when a clearly
exhausted Benedict XVI resigned, unable to carry on.
With the scandal still fresh,
the pope was elected in 2013 on a mandate from his fellow cardinals to reform
the Vatican bureaucracy and clean up its opaque finances. He set out promptly
by creating a commission of eight experts to gather information from all
Vatican offices on the Holy See's overall financial situation, which by that
time was dire.
Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo
Balda, a high-ranking Vatican official affiliated with the Opus Dei movement,
and Francesca Chaouqui, an Italian public relations executive, were both
members – and now are accused in the leaks investigation.
The monsignor has yet to
comment but Chaouqui wrote on Twitter: "I am not a poison-pen letter
writer, I have never betrayed the Pope. I never gave a document to anyone.
Never to anyone."
Nuzzi's book focuses on the
work of the commission and the resistance it encountered in getting information
out of Vatican departments that have long enjoyed near-complete autonomy in
budgeting, hiring and spending.
"Holy Father, ... There is
a complete absence of transparency in the book-keeping both of the Holy See and
the Governorate," five international auditors wrote the pope in June 2013,
according to Nuzzi's book. "Costs are out of control. This applies in
particular to personnel costs, but it also extends elsewhere."
Citing emails,
minutes of meetings, recorded private conversations and memos, the book paints
a picture of a Vatican bureaucracy entrenched in a culture of mismanagement,
waste and secrecy.
It might not
be far off the mark given that the pope has repeatedly and publicly warned the
Roman Curia against engaging in "intrigue, gossip, cliques, favoritism and partiality" and acting more like a royal court than an institution of
service.
Last Christmas
he delivered an infamous dressing down of his closest collaborators, citing the
"15 ailments of the Curia" that included living
"hypocritical" double lives and suffering from "spiritual
Alzheimer's".
That said, the
book is clearly written from the point of view of the commission members,
sympathetic to their plight and setting up an "us against them"
narrative of the new reformers battling the Vatican's entrenched Old Guard,
without addressing why the Old Guard might have had reason to distrust them.
The book cites
a memo listing six priorities when the commission began work, starting with the
need to get a handle on the Vatican's vast real estate holdings. Nuzzi cites a
commission report that found that the value of the real estate was some €2.7
billion (£1.9 billion), seven times higher than the amount entered onto the
balance sheets.
Rents were
sometimes 30 to 100 per cent below market, the commission found, including some
apartments that were given free to cardinals and bureaucrats as part of their
overall compensation or retirement packages.
The book says
that if market rates were applied, homes given to employees would generate
income of €19.4 million rather than the €6.2 million currently recorded, while
other "institutional" buildings which today generate no income would
generate income of €30.4 million.
The second
priority on the commission's list was to get a handle on the management of bank
accounts for the Vatican's "postulators", the officials who spearhead
candidates for sainthood. The process – which involves painstaking research
into the "heroic" deeds of saintly candidates and the search for
miracle cures – has always been steeped in secrecy.
Nuzzi
estimates that the average price tag for a single cause is around €500,000 and
has gone as high as €750,000 for one beatification. Funding comes from donors eager
to see their candidate honoured. Causes that inspire wealthy donors get lots of
funding, poorer causes get little – and often get stalled as a result.
After the
Vatican's saint-making office told the commission it had no documentation about
the postulators' funding or bank accounts, the commission had the postulators'
accounts frozen at the Vatican bank, Nuzzi said.
In an
indication of the controversy that the commission's work engendered, Nuzzi
recounts a previously little-known incident: the March 30, 2014 break-in at the
commission's offices and theft of commission documents. The burglary may well
have been an inside job, as the thieves appeared to know exactly which locker
to target to get the documents.
"The
action should be understood as a warning to those who were carrying
out the most
delicate inquiries; to those who were offering the pontiff the tools for revolutionizing the Curia," Nuzzi concluded.
Finally, Nuzzi
recounts the tale of Monsignor Giuseppe Sciacca, the number two in the Vatican
City State administration, who wanted a fancier apartment. Top-ranking Vatican
cardinals often enjoy enormous apartments, with some commanding upward of 400
square metres apiece.
When Sciacca's
neighbour, an elderly priest, was admitted to hospital for a long period,
Sciacca took advantage of the absence to break through a wall separating their
flats and incorporated an extra room into his apartment, furniture and all,
Nuzzi recounts.
The elderly
prelate eventually came home to find his things in boxes, and died a short time
later.
The pope, who
lives in a hotel room, summarily demoted Sciacca, forcing him to move out. Sciacca
did not comment on the claims.
The Telegraph
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