If you have to ask a Jesuit to straighten out your finances, you are in big trouble. Yet that is what Pope Francis has done. True, some of us can balance our chequebooks, but that is not our charism. In the late 1980s, I was handed the books by the director of a Jesuit think Read more
Amid a brewing financial scandal over the Holy See’s investments in London real estate, Pope Francis, Monday, announced he will replace the Vatican’s top financial watchdog official. Announcing René Brülhart’s replacement, the Vatican said Pope Francis has chosen a new president but does not name him or her. The three-sentence announcement said Francis thanked Brülhart Read more
When Father Juan Antonio Guerrero was announced as the new head of the Secretariat for the Economy, a collective ‘huh?’ could probably be heard across Rome. The Spanish Jesuit is not a Vatican veteran and has only been in Rome for about two years, where he oversaw the various Jesuit institutions located in and around Read more
Cleaning up Vatican finances and making them more transparent is paying big dividends. Before the financial clean up – which Pope Benedict XVI launched in 2009 and Pope Francis has continued – the Vatican Bank had been an embarrassment to the Church. The aim of the clean-up was to fight money laundering and terrorist financing and Read more
An Italian journalist known as the “Vatileaks’ author is about to publish a new book revealing fresh secrets about sex, crimes and money in the Holy See. Gianluigi Nuzzi faced court over his last book (Vatican SpA) for leaking confidential Vatican documents. His new book is called Original Sin: Secret Accounts, Hidden Truths, Blackmail and Read more
Pope Francis is making progress in cleaning up the Vatican’s hidden financial corners. He has invited international financial watchdog, Moneyval, to check the accounts. He has also had the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority (AIF) have a look at the Holy See’s finances. The AIF has found 23 cases of suspected financial irregularity. It has sent Read more
Germany’s Bild newspaper says a multi-million dollar donation seen to be at the centre of the Order of Malta’s recent dispute with the Holy See came from a New Zealand registered trust. Bild reported that the Grand Chancellor of the Order, Baron Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager, accepted a 30 million Swiss franc donation (US$31 million) Read more
There are many ways of analyzing the fault lines in the Vatican, but perhaps the most time-honored (if also often exaggerated) is the tension between an Italian old guard and pretty much everybody else. By conventional political logic, anyway, Saturday saw the Italians notch a fairly big win. It could turn out, however, to be Read more
Cardinal George Pell has pledged to serve his full five-year term as prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy. Although he turns 75 next month, the cardinal plans to continue in his current post until 2019. This was confirmed in a statement his office released late last month. A Crux article reported that, according to Read more
Francesca Chaouqui, a public relations expert and former consultant to the Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See, strongly denied that he leaked confidential Vatican documents to journalists. “I can assure you that no reserved documents ever passed from my hands,” Chaouqui said. “Never, never,” she during her testimony at Read more