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	God's Wheeler Dealer and the Mystery Millions . . . By John Cooney Irish Independent July 3, 2010 http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/gods-wheeler-dealer-and-the-mystery-millions-2244662.html I t's been some week for Pope Benedict. It began with his indignant protests against the seizure of secret church files on paedophile priests by Belgian police, then the US Supreme Court ruled that the Vatican no longer had diplomatic immunity and would have to defend a lawsuit against a dead Irish paedophile priest. And now the 83-year-old German pontiff finds the church mired in a potentially massive financial scandal, as Italian lawyers claim widespread corruption within the heart of Rome. Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, the former head of the centuries-old, property-rich Congregation for Evangelisation (Propaganda Fide), has come under serious fire. Propaganda Fide owns and manages hundreds of properties in central Rome, worth an estimated €9bn and fetching €56m in annual rent into the Vatican coffers. So powerful is the head of Propaganda Fide -- a post briefly held by the Irishman Dermot Ryan, the former Archbishop of Dublin before his sudden death in 1984 -- that he is known in the Vatican corridors of power as the Red Pope, or Il Papa Rosso. A successor of Ryan, Cardinal Sepe is under investigation for corruption after allegedly receiving kickbacks during the five years that he headed Propaganda Fide from 2001 to 2006. Charged by magistrates in the central Italian town of Perugia, he is suspected of collusion with Pietro Lunardi, Italy's former Minister for Infrastructure and Transportation. In 2004, Sepe's autonomous office reportedly sold Lunardi, a central Rome palazzo, way below the market price and a year later Propaganda Fide allegedly received €2.5m in public subsidies for repairs on its Piazza di Spagna headquarters that were never done. Now the Archbishop of Naples, the 67-year-old Cardinal Sepe, revered by Neapolitans as "O'guapo", the local slang for "The Boss", has mounted a vigorous defence. He insists that the two events were unrelated, and he claims that the money Propaganda earned from the sale of the lavish palazzo was sent to another Vatican office, the Administration for the Patrimony of the Apostolic See. (APSA). Irrespective of the outcome, this high-profile case highlights the lack of transparency in the Vatican's hidden wealth. Propaganda runs its multibillion-euro portfolio independently of APSA, the body that administers the Holy See's assets, on which Ireland's Peter Sutherland sits. The Sepe case has shown that the Vatican's two top money and property bureaux operate independently without any liaison. It is as if Brian Lenihan's Department of Finance micro-managed the Irish economy without any oversight of the Office of Public Works. No doubt, there is scope for Pope Benedict to make a virtue out of a deficiency by announcing plans for greater internal cohesion and transparency between the two money-and- property-rich Vatican institutions -- Propaganda Fide and APSA. This would involve the institutions' top brass exchanging information about deeds of sales and donations from the faithful. However, although the Pope likes to dwell in his ivory tower, he now needs to confront this shady world of clientilismo. For too long Italian property speculators have been too close to Princes of the church, who live in Renaissance-style grandeur in splendid palazzos that make the residences owned in the Celtic Tiger era by moguls such as Sean Fitzpatrick and Bernard McNamara look like downtown shanty hovels. In 2006, a year after he was elected pontiff, Benedict surprised Vatican watchers by exiling Sepe to Naples. Usually such appointments are for life. It was a clear indication that the Pope was unhappy with his performance. Sepe's successor, the holy Indian Cardinal Ivan Diaz, now wants out on health grounds. Financial corruption in the Vatican could prove as damaging for papal prestige as the abuse crisis. The evidence is mounting that during Pope John Paul II's reign, the church protected the serial paedophile, the late Mexican founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Fr Marcial Maciel. Maciel was a close friend of Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid. The paedophile cover-ups by bishops in Ireland, Germany and Austria are all pointing to inaction in the Vatican. These files are stacked up on the pontiff's desk. Pope Benedict's dilemma is that any temptation to blame his Polish predecessor, who he wants to fast-track to sainthood, will implicate himself to these abuse scandals. His chosen alternative is to inaugurate a new epoch of re-evangelisation in a crusade against secularisation. It is a recipe for nurturing hard-line sectarian zealots within a shrinking flock. It smacks of Nero fiddling while Rome burns and the money trail vanishes.
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