Vatican Bank - Printable Version

The Vatican is threatening to take legal action against those responsible for publishing a new book of leaked internal documents. The book sheds light on power struggles and corruption inside the Holy See and the thinking of its embattled top banker.Pope Benedict XVI has already appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the "Vatileaks" scandal. It erupted earlier this year with the publication of leaked memos alleging corruption and mismanagement in Holy See affairs and internal squabbles over its efforts to comply with international anti-money-laundering norms.The publication Saturday of "His Holiness" by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, added fuel to the fire, reproducing confidential letters and memos to and from Pope Benedict and his personal secretary which, according to the Vatican, violated the pope's right to privacy.Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said in a statement Saturday the book was an "objectively defamatory"work that "clearly assumes characters of a criminal act." He warned the Holy See would get to the bottom of who "stole" the documents, who received them and who published them. He warned the Holy See would seek international cooperation in its quest for justice, presumably with Italian magistrates.The Vatican had already warned of legal action against Nuzzi after he published letters in January from the former second-highest Vatican administrator to the pope. In those letters the administrator begged not to be transferred for having exposed alleged corruption that cost the Holy See millions of euro in higher contract prices. The prelate, Monsignor Carlo Maria Vigano, is now the Vatican's US ambassador.Nuzzi, author of Vatican SpA, a 2009 volume laying out shady dealings of the Vatican Bank based on leaked documents, said he was approached by sources inside the Vatican with the trove of new documents. Most of them are of fairly recent vintage and many of them painting the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in a negative light.Much of the documentation is fairly Italy-centric: about a 2009 scandal over the ex-editor of the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, a previously-unknown dinner between Benedict and Italy's president, and even a 2011 letter from Italy's pre-eminent talk show host Bruno Vespa to the pope enclosing a check for 10,000 euro for his charity work and asking for a private audience in exchange.But there are international leaks as well, including diplomatic cables from Vatican embassies from Jerusalem to Cameroon. Some concern the conclusions of the pope's delegate to the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order. In a memo sent to the pope last autumn he warned that the financial situation of the order, beset by a scandal over its pedophile founder, "while not grave, is serious and pressing."Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the head of the Institute for Religious Works, otherwise known as the Vatican Bank, gets significant ink. His private memos to the pope with his take on the Vatican's response to the global financial crisis and how to handle the church's tax exempt status amid Italian government efforts to crack down on tax evasion have also been published.The bank has been trying for some two years to remedy its reputation as a shady tax haven beset by scandals. One of them is the collapse of Italy's Banco Ambrosiano and the death of its head, Roberto Calvi, who also helped manage Vatican investments and was found hanging from London's Blackfriars Bridge in 1982.In a bid to show it has mended its ways, the Institute for Religious Works this week invited ambassadors from 35 countries in for a tour and a chat with its managing director as part of a new transparency campaign. The tour came on the same day Holy See representatives were in Strasbourg discussing the first draft of a report from a Council of Europe committee on the Vatican's compliance with international norms to fight money laundering and terrorism financing.British Ambassador Nigel Baker, who went on the Institute for Religious Works tour, later blogged that the Vatican's reputation depends on showing that its institutions are transparent."Plenty still needs to be done. But the Holy See needs to stick to its guns. It is in their interest, and ours," Baker wrote.
http://www.rt.com/news/vatican-slams-leaked-documents-criminal-694/

The leaking of documents has reinforced their positions in the curia. But the American party is also advancing. While for the secretariat of state, the candidacy of a non-Italian is gaining strength

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VATICAN CITY, June 28, 2012 The pope's "butler," Paolo Gabriele, remains in custody as the only suspect in the crime. At the moment, it is one of aggravated theft. The investigative commission of cardinals that is working in parallel with the Vatican magistracy is continuing its hearings.

It is not known how long it will take for the two investigations to the reach a conclusion. But this does not mean that the so-called "Vatileaks" case has not already had an impact on the life of that particular organism which is the Roman curia.

Far from it. Some consequences, in fact, can already be identified in the short term, while others can be conjectured in the medium and long term.

OPUS DEI AND THE UNITED STATES

To begin with, in just a few weeks there has been an increase in the curia of the visible role of Opus Dei, which already numbers, in the organizational structure, the secretary of the pontifical council for legislative texts (Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, of the clergy of Obra), the secretary of the congregation for the clergy (Archbishop Celso Morga Iruzubieta, of the priestly fraternity of the Holy Cross, connected to Opus) and the secretary of the prefecture of economic affairs (Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda).

The head of the investigative commission of cardinals, in fact, is Cardinal JuliÃ¡n Herranz, a member of Opus Dei and former president of the same dicastery as Arrieta.

Not only that. Chosen for the unprecedented role of communications "adviser" to the secretariat of state is Greg Burke, a numerary of Obra who may be able to restore the splendor of JoaquÃn Navarro Valls, also a numerary, the famous spokesman of John Paul II.

Burke will be working alongside the media "crisis unit" of the Apostolic Palace made up of the substitute, Giovanni Angelo Becciu, the assessor, Peter Brian Well, Monsignor Carlo Maria Polvani (nephew of the nuncio in the United States, Carlo Maria ViganÃ²) and the heads of the Vatican media, Father Federico Lombardi of Vatican Radio and Giovanni Maria Vian of "L'Osservatore Romano."

With the arrival of Burke from Fox News, the influence of the United States is also growing in the curia.

Already working in Rome are Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, archbishops Augustine Di Noia and Joseph W. Tobin, Monsignor Wells, and Father Michael J. Zielinski. Without counting the retiring cardinal William J. Levada and the retired cardinals Bernard F. Law and James F. Stafford.

But recently the influence of the Americans has also increased with the arrival at the curia of the lawyer Jeffrey Lena, who has been given an office in the secretary of state, and with the growing influence of the leader of the Knights of Columbus, Carl Anderson, who has also become famous for the document he signed by which Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was brutally ejected from the presidency of the Institute for Works of Religion.

THE GENDARMES

The "Vatileaks" case has also brought to light the great power acquired in recent years by the Vatican gendarmes.

It seems so long ago now, the 1970 decision of Paul VI to abolish the pontifical military corps, with the exception of the historic Swiss Guards. Pope Montini turned the gendarmes into a simple security service. But in 2002, this corps went back to the name Gendarmeria, and is formally an agency of the governorate of Vatican City-State.

In reality, it is much more. In recent years, the gendarmes have acquired sophisticated weapons and powerful surveillance equipment. By now even the highest offices of the Vatican hierarchies suspect, rightly or wrongly, that their every whisper can be intercepted. To such an extent that the commander of the gendarmes, Domenico Giani, a former agent of the Italian secret service who has been in office since 2006, is now revered and feared almost more than a secretary of state.

THE SECRETARIAT OF STATE

It is precisely on the figure of the secretary of state that there could be consequences in the medium term.

The unprecedented audience given by Benedict XVI on the afternoon of Saturday, June 23 to Cardinals George Pell, Marc Ouellet, Jean-Louis Tauran, Camillo Ruini e Jozef Tomko, and made public by the press office and by "L'Osservatore Romano," has been universally interpreted by the media as an alarm bell for the stability in the role of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who was not among the five invited, although this interpretation was quickly denied by Father Lombardi.

On the same day, in the morning, the pope had also presided over a meeting of the heads of the dicasteries of the curia. This meeting had on its agenda not the question of the leaking of documents although at the beginning of the session, the substitute reminded those present of the need to take special care of papers and archives but the examination of the request of a few ecclesial movements like Focolare or the Community of Saint Egidio to be able to incardinate their own clergy directly. The prevalent opinion was that of reiterating that incardination must remain an exclusive faculty of the bishops and religious superiors, with the possibility for the movements to stipulate conventions with dioceses or religious institutes.

Returning to the question of the secretariat of state, beyond the fact of whether and when Benedict XVI will decide to replace his closest collaborator, it seems that the hypothesis is taking hold that Bertone's successor could be a non-Italian.

If this happens, it will mean an unprecedented shift.

In fact, except for the few months during which French cardinal Jean Villot was secretary of state at the beginning of the pontificate of John Paul II who very soon after he was elected reiterated "in scriptis" that this was a matter of a temporary situation in view of the appointment of an Italian, who was to be Agostino Casaroli there is no record of neither the pope nor the secretary of state being an Italian.

This eventuality would find its justification in the desire to purify the Sacred Palaces from the Italian intrigues believed to be at the bottom of "Vatileaks" would then have as a corollary interest the fact that the current management of Italian policy would for the first time fall squarely on the shoulders of the Italian episcopal conference.

ON THE FUTURE POPE

Finally many think the "Vatileaks" question could have consequences for the future selection of a new pontiff.

In fact, the idea that the leaking of documents is the result of entirely Italian intrigues has led to the emergence of a twofold consideration among the cardinals and bishops. On the one hand there are those who think that it would be better that a future Pope not come from Italy. On the other there are those who say that it would be better that he come from there, in order to be better able to unmask and eradicate the intrigues.

But these seem to be purely academic discussions. In the Vatican, in fact, there is no lack of those who associate pope Joseph Ratzinger with the memory of Leo XIII, who was chosen because he was rather elderly according to the criteria of the time, after the extremely long pontificate of Pius IX. And who instead reached the age of 93.

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