If you marry, one of you must volunteer to leave the Vatican's employ altogether (going to another department isn't acceptable). If you don't leave of your own accord, you'll both get sacked.

That's just what happened to two Vatican bank employees last week. They were both sacked because their recent wedding violates the newly-introduced ban and neither wanted to volunteer to lose their job.

The Vatican bank said in a statement on Wednesday that it had reached the "difficult decision" to end the couple's employment contracts.

The "formation of a married couple among employees is, in fact, blatantly contradictory to the current regulations within the institute" the Vatican says.

Times are a-changing

The couple - nicknamed "Romeo and Juliet" by the Italian media - met some years ago at the Institute for the Works of Religion, commonly known as the IOR or Vatican Bank, while working in different departments.

Three children later, they decided to marry. Their attorney Laura Sgro says they informed the bank of their plans in February.

Although the Vatican was aware the couple have three children and were planning to marry, it pressed ahead with its new personnel regulation barring workplace marriages.

The couple appealed to Pope Francis, seeking a dispensation in the enforcement of the new regulation, as it had gone into effect once wedding plans were already underway and the official Catholic announcement made.

They received no reply.

The ban went into effect in May. The couple married in August.

The IOR defends the dismissal

The bank said it in no way meant to question the right of employees to get married - a sacrament Francis frequently urges young couples to undertake in the face of dwindling numbers of Catholic weddings.

The couple's dismissal was dictated by the need to preserve transparency and impartiality in the institute's activities, and in no way intended to question the right of two people to be united in marriage" the IOR says.

The IOR says the marriage ban's primary objective is to avoid the reputational risk of accusations of nepotism and "avoid the possible emergence of situations of conflicts of interest in the institute's operations, in order to protect its integrity and service to its clients".

Civil court case pending

In a letter to the IOR bank chiefs, Sgro has challenged the couple's dismissal.. She will be taking the case to the Vatican civil court within 30 days, she says.

In her view, the IOR's notification of dismissal was "null, illegitimate and gravely harmful of the fundamental rights of people and employees, and therefore devoid of any effect".

Source

• Crux
• The Guardian
• AP News
• News Channel 12-3-11

A young couple who work at the Vatican Bank are said to have got married. As a result, they are threatened with dismissal.

The Vatican trade union ADLV has shown solidarity with two employees of the Vatican Bank.

It is hoped that regulations do not take precedence over sacraments in the Vatican, according to a statement issued by the ADLV on Wednesday.

According to the internal rules of the Vatican Bank, employees are prohibited from marrying one another.

This rule is intended to prevent conflicts of interest and cliques.

According to the ADLV, there had recently been talks with the Vatican Bank and the Curia in this case, but these had been unsuccessful. Continue reading

"The IOR does not receive or invest money from Russia," read a statement by the Institute for Religious Works, using the Italian acronym IOR for the institution more commonly referred to as the Vatican Bank. "The IOR strongly rejects the allegations of the Councillor, according to whom the IOR would be investing Russian money."

The Vatican Bank insisted the institute only provides financial services to Catholic organisations and that it is held to the highest possible international standards.

Read More

Officially known as the Institute for Religious Works or IOR, the bank, once a symbol of financial misconduct, has successfully rebranded itself as a pillar of transparency at the Vatican.

Pope Francis and his predecessor, the late Pope Benedict XVI, implemented significant changes to enhance transparency and efficiency in the Catholic institution's financial dealings.

Pope Francis consolidated all financial assets of the Holy See within the Institute for Religious Works in August 2022, promoting centralisation.

The report emphasised that the Institute for Religious Works is deeply committed to managing assets in line with the principles of the Catholic faith.

It declared, "The high standards achieved by the IOR in asset management amply confirm the choice made."

Furthermore, the statement added that the bank's core capital and liquidity contribute to its status as "one of the strongest financial institutions in the world."

Conviction of former Vatican bank president

Over the past few decades, the Vatican has made concerted efforts to restore the credibility of its financial institution, which aims primarily to securely distribute the church's wealth for its numerous global missions.

However, it has faced challenges, including the conviction of the former president of the Vatican bank, Angelo Caloia, for money laundering related to an obscure real estate investment.

In 2019, new leadership at the Vatican bank flagged a suspicious loan request of 150 million euros for a real estate investment in London's Chelsea district.

This transaction now forms the core of a Vatican trial involving ten individuals, including Vatican officials, who face money laundering and corruption charges.

Meanwhile, in a recent interview with Vatican media, Monsignor Battista Ricca, a prelate at the Vatican bank, acknowledged that the institute is an integral part of a larger entity—the Holy See.

"This realisation has greatly reduced the idea of acting independently and of being able to operate free from any rule. Also, the spectre of the genuine disasters committed in the past is always there to keep us on the alert," Msgr Ricca added.

Sources

Religion News

National Catholic Reporter

CathNews New Zealand

Compared to a net profit of 38 million euros ($46 million) the previous year, "this is a very significant result" considering the low yields and high volatility of financial markets triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, wrote Cardinal Santos Abril Castelló, president of the Commission of Cardinals supervising the bank.

It is also significant given that the Holy See "lost much of its income from its most substantial contributor, namely the Vatican Museums, which were closed for a large part of the year due to the pandemic," he wrote.

Read More

The 58-year-old Roman was named to the post, second highest at APSA, on June 15. He is the first layperson to get that position and succeeds Msgr. Mauro Rivella who completed his five-year term in April.

Gasperini is an auditor and chartered accountant with a degree in economics and commerce.

He has more than 25 years of experience in consulting and auditing services at leading financial institutions: banks, insurance companies, asset management companies, securities brokerage firms and financial companies. Read more

In a tell-all new book "When the Bullet Hits the Bone," Anthony Raimondi (69) opens up about John Paul's death after just 33 days in office.

Raimondi says his co-conspirators killed the pope because John Paul I threatened to expose a billion-dollar stock fraud by Vatican bank insiders.

John Paul - who died after only 33 days in office - vowed to defrock the perpetrators, who would have been jailed.

If he'd agreed to keep his mouth shut, John Paul "could have had a nice long reign" instead of dying, Raimondi says.

The perpetrators included Raimondi's cousin, Cardinal Paul Marcinkus, who ran the Vatican bank and about "half the cardinals and bishops in the Vatican."

Raimondi says Marcinkus recruited him to come to the Vatican to help with the murder.

He had to learn the pope's habits and observe as Marcinkus drugged John Paul by spiking his nightly cup of tea with Valium.

He was told he needed to observe the process and to testify before God that John Paul I didn't suffer, Raimondi says.

However, rather than be in the pope's bedroom while he was being murdered, Raimondi says he chose to wait in the corridor outside the bedroom.

"I'd done a lot of things in my time, but I didn't want to be there in the room when they killed the pope. I knew that would buy me a one-way ticket to hell."

He claims the Valium did its job so well John Paul wouldn't have stirred "even if there had been an earthquake."

His cousin then measured cyanide in the dropper, "put the dropper in the pope's mouth and squeezed.

"When it was done, he closed the door behind him and walked away."

A papal assistant checked on him, then cried out that the pope was dying.

Marcinkus and two other cardinals in on the plot "rushed into the bedroom like it was a big surprise," Raimondi writes.

A Vatican doctor was then summoned, who said the pope had suffered a fatal heart attack.

Raimondi insists the Valium and the deadly toxin killed John Paul I painlessly.

He says a new plan to kill John Paul's successor, John Paul II was developed soon after he became the new pope.

The fraudsters believed he would take action against them, Raimondi says.

However the new pope decided not to act because he knew he too would die.

Raimondi says he will stand by the claims he makes in his book "till the day I die.

" If they take [the pope's body] and do any type of testing, they will still find traces of the poison in his system."

Source

• Herald Sun
• New York Post
• Image: New York Post

The Secretariat of State is the most powerful department in the Vatican bureaucracy. The Financial Information Authority, or AIF, was created in 2010 by then-Pope Benedict XVI to combat money laundering after the Vatileaks banking scandal.

The communique stated that Vatican police "acquired documents and electronic devices" in the raid, presumably having to do with the secretariat's financial dealings, in the wake of charges presented last summer by the Institute for Religious Works, commonly known as the Vatican bank, and the office of the Revisor General, which is responsible for investigating corruption.

The Vatican has never publicly mentioned the charges, however, and last week's brief statement didn't explain the reason for the raid. Requests for clarification to the Vatican Press Office went unanswered.

The raid seems to be the latest shoe to drop in the Catholic Church's ongoing attempt to reform the Vatican's financial arm, an effort that has suffered setbacks of late. The three departments Pope Francis created to champion the reform, the Secretariat for the Economy, the office of the Auditor General and the Council for the Economy, have been decapitated or have shown themselves to be ineffective.

In 2014, Francis named Australian Cardinal George Pell prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, who set about cleaning up the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, the financial center at the Vatican. But a year later, Pell became embroiled in charges of sexual abuse of two choristers in Australia; he is currently serving a six-year prison sentence. No substitute has been appointed by Francis to take his place.

Libero Milone, selected by Francis to be the first auditor general, was unceremoniously kicked out of the Vatican in 2017 by the gendarmerie before he was able to finish his work for alleged double-dipping on expenses amounting to $33,000. All charges against him have since been dropped, and Milone, who had accused a former papal chief of staff, now Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, of financial malfeasance, has said his ouster was politically motivated.

Meanwhile, little has been heard from the Council for the Economy, as its head, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, grapples with tensions with the bishops in his native Germany. On Sept. 20, the council had an extraordinary meeting with representatives from various Vatican departments, allegedly for the purpose of reining in the Vatican budget deficit of over $76 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Francis hasn't given up. Last week, two days after the raid, he named a former lawyer for the city of Rome, Giuseppe Pignatone, as president of the Vatican tribunal.

Pignatone is well known for his commitment to fighting syndicated crime in the Italian capital, a choice that has led some local media to suspect that the financial scandal has taken a complex turn.

If last week's one-paragraph explanation of the raid only seemed to invite speculation, the Roman media's rumor machine was happy to oblige. Journalists clamored to reach their sources and paced the halls seeking clerics and laypeople to explain this new Vatican riddle.

Italian daily "L'Espresso" got there first. On Wednesday, the paper published an image of a document issued by the head of the Vatican police, Domenico Giani, showing pictures of five people, four lay and one religious, all of whom were said to be "cautiously suspended from service." It is unclear why the Vatican did not share the document with the press, as it was handed out widely to Vatican employees.

In the Oct. 3 article, L'Espresso's Vatican reporter, Emiliano Fittipaldi, explained that the current scandal revolves around investments made by Becciu and Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, who oversaw the secretariat's financial investments until he was abruptly removed by Francis this summer.

Starting in 2011, according to Fittipaldi, the two prelates made investments with two Luxembourg-based companies using money that may have been derived from donations by the faithful. The investments are said to concern a real estate property in London.

Perlasca's name appears in the document published in L'Espresso, as does that of Monsignor Mauro Carlino, who oversees the Office of Information and Documentation of the Vatican Secretariat of State. His position was previously held by Carlo Maria Polvani, nephew of the papal accuser and former Vatican representative to the United States, Carlo Maria Viganò.

Also named were Tommaso Di Ruzza, second in command to Financial Information Authority President René Brülhart, Vincenzo Mauriello, of the Secretariat of State's protocol department, and Fabrizio Tirabassi, who oversaw the Secretariat of State's financial investments after Perlasca's departure.

Finally, there was Caterina Sansone, an administrative assistant at the Secretariat of State who answered to Tirabassi.
All of them are barred from entering the Vatican, with the exception of Carlino, who resides in the Domus Sanctae Martae, a hotel that is also the pope's current residence.

But what these people are accused of — if anything — is still unknown, and speculation in the Italian press has shed no light on how any alleged misdeeds are related to their higher ups, if at all. One story this week had Becciu being told by Francis that he is no longer allowed to leave the Vatican.

"How funny!" the veteran cardinal tweeted in answer. "Just yesterday the pope wished me safe travels for the flight that tomorrow will take me to Brazil!"

• Claire Giangravé in RNS

On Saturday Francis signed the new statutes and approved other changes to bolster the reforms that have cleaned out the once scandal-ridden institution.

The reforms were initially launched by Francis's predecessor Pope Benedict.

Until Benedict and Francis sought to curb the bank's activities, it had been been caught in cases of corruption, tax evasion, embezzlement, money laundering and real estate fraud.

Some of the cases involved top officials and prelates.

Andrea Tornielli, the Vatican's editorial director, says the new statutes are "an important step in the process of adhering to the best international standards".

Although the bank has opened its books to external auditors over the past few years, it was mandated only to undertake internal audits. The new statutes make external audits obligatory.

The new rules also ban bank employees, most of whom are non-clerics, from holding consultancies or other roles with outside institutions.

In addition, the number of members on the bank's lay board of supervisors, which is made up of internationally known financial experts, is increased from five to seven. No member of the Vatican bank is on this board.

Increasing the number of lay board members will strengthen its role while reducing the power of the five-member supervisory commission of cardinals.

For decades before reforms were implemented, the Vatican bank was embroiled in numerous financial scandals. People with no right to have accounts at the bank opened them and used them for illicit purposes, with help from corrupt bank insiders.

The bank's stated purpose is to manage funds for the Church, Vatican employees, religious institutes, and Catholic charities.

During the past six years, hundreds of Vatican bank accounts have been closed.

An on-site inspection of the bank by the Financial Information Authority (the Vatican's controller), last year found the bank was complying with anti-money laundering legislation. The subsequent report said the inspection outcome was "substantially positive".

In 2017, Italy put the Vatican on its "white list" of states with cooperative financial institutions, ending years of mistrust.

The same year, Moneyval, a monitoring body of the Council of Europe, gave Vatican reforms a mostly positive evaluation, particularly those carried out at the bank.

Source

• America Magazine
• Reuters
• Image: Catholic News World

The bank, which had made a profit of 31.9 million euros in 2017, said the decrease was due "to the strong turbulence of the markets throughout the year and the persistence of interest rates which are still very low." Read more

The Institute for Religious Works (commonly known as the Vatican bank) issued its annual report on Tuesday.

The report says the bank earned 31.9 million euros in profits last year.

This is about 7 million euros down from its 36 million euro-profit in 2016.

The profits are returned to the Holy See.

The report also shows a small decrease in assets. These are presently valued at 5.27 billion euros compared to 5.69 billion last year.

Cardinal Santos Abril y Castello, who heads the commission of cardinals overseeing the bank, says Pope Francis has made clear profits must not trump ethics.

The bank's investment strategy and recent decisions have therefore seen it reject proposed settlements and take legal action against former bank executives in Malta and the Vatican.

A major objective the bank achieved last year involved selecting investments that are consistent with Catholic ethics such as the "respect of human life, creation and human dignity."

Investments seeking to contribute to the "care of the common home," as expressed in Pope Francis's environmental encyclical Laudato Si', were also favoured.

In addition, corporate social responsibility and the role of companies in creating a sustainable future were the two fundamental features the bank looks for in choosing investments.

This led the bank to invest in projects that promote the development of poorer countries and are in line with the realisation of a sustainable future for future generations.

Individuals holding accounts at the bank must be Vatican employees, retirees or diplomats accredited to the Holy See.

Bishops' conferences, dioceses, religious orders and other official Catholic works also may have accounts.

The bank served approximately 15,000 clients with $6.25 billion in assets.

Source

• Crux Now
• NZ Herald
• Image: Amazon.com

Angelo Caloia and his former lawyer Gabriele Liuzzo (95) have been charged with embezzling 57 million euros ($68 million) in Vatican real estate sales.

The case shows the Holy See's willingness to prosecute shady financial deals that may have involved top cardinals.

The Vatican says the bank's former president, Angelo Caloia, is the highest-ranking Holy See financial official to be indicted on such charges.

Seventy-eight year-old Coloia, along with his lawyer, 94 year-old Gabriele Liuzzo, denied any wrongdoing.

A third person who was under investigation, former director general Lelio Scaletti, died several years ago.

The bank (officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion) alleges "unlawful conduct" by the three occurred from 2001 to 2008. This period involved "the disposal of a considerable part of the institute's real estate assets."

In December 2014, Reuters reported the Vatican's top prosecutor, Gian Piero Milano, had frozen millions of dollars in accounts held by the three men.

Milano says the men regularly under-represented the proceeds from real estate sales in the Vatican bank's official books.

They allegedly received the difference between the real sale prices and the amount officially recorded separately.

Milano's order which froze the assets says the trio often received the money from the real estate sales in cash.

He claims some of the proceeds were deposited in a Rome bank account that was not registered on the IOR's balance sheet.

The bank's internal investigation into the alleged scam begun in 2013 by then-president Ernst von Freyberg, a German businessman.

Freyberg, who was president until 2014, commissioned an independent audit of the sale of properties formerly owned by the bank.

His misgivings were aroused after noting suspicious accounting procedures under the Coloia and Scaletti administrations.

Freyberg then began an overhaul of the bank, which had been implicated in numerous financial scandals.

Thousands of accounts were closed.

Last year Italy put the Vatican on its"white list" of states with cooperative financial institutions.

This ended years of mistrust, providing an endorsement of Pope Francis's efforts to clean up finances.

Moneyval, the Council of Europe's monitoring body, has said in several evaluations the Vatican has made great strides in cleaning up the IOR and other financial departments.

At the same time, Moneyval says the Vatican still needs to be more aggressive in bringing cases to trial.

Source

• Reuters
• CruxNow
• New York Times
• Image: Speigel Online

The news of Giulio Mattietti's removal from the bank (correctly called the Institute of Religious Works) has been confirmed by the Holy See press office.

It is not clear why Mattietti was removed, although Italian media suggest there was a similar occurrence in the past few days with another bank employee.

However, the bank said last Friday that Mattietti's removal was part of "normal physiological management affairs."

It also claimed "many of the details published by the press are not correct".

Reports say Mattietti's removal was to preserve the integrity of documents and computer files he may have wanted to take with him.

They also say a probe into Mattietti's activities will focus on those documents and on his computer files.

The former Director General of the bank, Paolo Cipriani, appointed Mattietti head of the computer department in 2007 after a decade of service within the institute.

Cipriani was convicted last year for violating anti-money laundering laws during his time in office in 2010.

He was found guilty of not providing JP Morgan crucial information regarding three separate banking operations of approximately $140,000, $57,000 and $119,000.

Mattietti was promoted to head of the bank in 2015 by the current Director General, Gian Franco Mammì.

The bank has been involved in numerous controversies.

It was involved with the Banco Ambrosiano which collapsed in 1982.

Accusations of fraudulent deals involving the Vatican Bank were cited at the time.

In 1990, St Pope John Paul II instituted a reform of the institution's governing structure but scandals continued.

Pope Benedict XVI created the Financial Information Authority in 2010 to act as a financial watchdog unit for the Vatican.

As part of the reform attempt, the Vatican signed numerous bilateral agreements with other countries - including Italy and the United States - to share financial information.

The agreements are designed to fight money laundering and tax evasion and to keep the Vatican Bank from being used as an offshore tax haven.

Benedict also allowed an outside agency to review the Vatican's efforts on financial reform.

He invited Moneyval, the Council of Europe's anti-money laundering agency, to inspect the Vatican's financial operations.

Source

• ANSA en Vatican
• Crux
• Image: Iglesia.info

Maltese judge, Mr Justice Wenzu Mintoff, will preside over the case. His role will include deciding the bank's total losses.

The Vatican statement says the losses are "significant."

It also said the bank is taking the action against "the persons" in Malta to show its commitment to "any appropriate action to protect its financial and reputational interests".

While the Vatican statement is guarded with names and details, various wildly different figures have emerged in the media.

The Daily Mail UK says according to a source close to the matter, the bank invested tens of millions of euros in funds in Malta and other countries in 2012 and 2013 when the bank was without a president.

(In May, 2012, the board of the bank ousted Italian Ettore Gotti Tedeschi by a no-confidence vote. It was not until February 2013 that German Ernst von Freyberg was appointed.)

A Vatican spokesman told the Times of Malta the issue dates back to the beginning of 2013 for investments initially worth €17 million.

The Malta Independent newspaper says Italian news reports state that the total losses suffered by the bank came to upwards of 230 million euros.

The Malta Independent also cites Italian news reports as identifying the investment vehicles as the "Ad Maiora" fund, where money was reportedly invested through Malta-based Futura Funds as well as two companies registered in Luxembourg and two "foreigners".

Magistrates had already found the bank had been embroiled in many Italian financial and international scandals in previous decades, as it was used by outsiders in both Italy and the Vatican either to launder money or evade taxes.

The court case does not yet have a sitting date assigned to it.

Pope Francis, who has said he wants the Roman Catholic Church to be a model of austerity and honesty, has made financial reform a central plank of his papacy.

Source

• The Malta Independent
• Daily Mail
• Times of Malta
• Image: The Malta Independent

The profits, which are up €20 million from the €16.1 million in the 2015 year, are "being distributed in aid of the Holy See's mission".

More properly called the Institute for the Works of Religion, the Vatican bank's report also records billions in deposits and investments and a decrease in expenses.

The bank says the €4 million reduction in expenses is a result of them "rationalising" outside contractors.

The strong end-of-year results offer a positive view of Pope Francis's Vatican financial reforms.

Australian Cardinal George Pell leads these reforms as the Vatican's Prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy.

Soon after his appointment in 2014, Pell announced a new management of the bank, appointing billionaire hedge fund guru Michael Hintze to its board.

Pell's role also included ridding the bank of illegal practices such as money laundering.

The bank's latest report says these practices have more than halved thanks to the strongly vigilant regime Pell introduced.

Thousands of accounts have been closed and strict new rules introduced in regards to who can hold an account with the bank.

Although the bank provides a deposit account and manages €5.7 billion worth of assets, it does not issue loans.

The financial statements were audited by Deloitte & Touche and reviewed by the Commission of Cardinals that oversees the Vatican bank's work before the report was released.

Source

• Catholic Herald
• The Tablet
• Image: The Australian

Their violations involved communications involving three small transfers.

They were sentenced to four months, 10 days each. Read more

According to a Greenpeace Energydesk investigation, Vatican Bank board member Sir Michael Hintze is the chief executive of the private hedge fund CQS Cayman, registered on the Cayman islands.

The fund holds stocks worth $8.3 million in energy companies.

It is noted that Hintze previously maintained ties with energy sector-related companies.

Jean-Baptiste Douville de Franssu, the Vatican Bank board president, is an adviser to two funds that hold multimillion dollar shares in oil and gas companies, according to the investigation.

"One fund, Carmignac Gestion, holds stocks worth $675.2m in American company Anadarko Petroleum.

The firm was forced to pay $5.1 billion to settle a case around environmental damage caused by one its subsidiaries in 2014. Carmignac Gestion also holds stocks in Shell and Exxon," Greenpeace said.

The Australian-born hedge fund manager is also a trustee of the right-wing think-tank of the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has a history of backing climate sceptic research.

Hintz is reportedly a major financial backer of Nigel Lawson's controversial climate skeptic pressure group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), Energydesk says.

In 2012, the Guardian obtained emails showing Hintze backing the foundation.

Hintze failed to respond to requests from Energydesk to clarify his relationship with GWPF and to discuss CQS's holdings in the energy sector.

Pope Francis warned in the encyclical that climate change threatens the environment as well as humanity.

He called for an urgent reduction in global carbon and encouraged the use of renewable energy sources. Fossil fuel is known to increase carbon emissions.

At the same time, financial power struggles inside the Vatican are ongoing, with Cardinal Pell facing tough opposition to his proposed financial reforms.

Source

• Global Pulse
• Inside the Vatican
• Catholic News Agency
• The Guardian
• Image: Pixabay

Two experienced bankers, Italian Carlo Salvatori and German Clemens Boersig, resigned from the board of the Institute for the Works of Religion.

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi said this followed a "divergence of opinion over the management of the institute".

Fr Lombardi said this was "normal" and "it is an unusual place".

However, a source with knowledge of the workings of IOR, who declined to be named, told Reuters there was frustration at the slow pace of change within the organisation over the past two years.

Continue reading