BishopAccountability.org

Pope Francis Saving Vatican from Deeper Pit of Shame

By Athena Yenko
International Business Times
July 3, 2013

http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/485912/20130703/nunzio-scarano-vatican-bank-scandal.htm#.UdQVbPmTgTY

The Vatican had refused to reinstate Poggi after he served a five-year sentence for abusing teenage boys

In the wake of the scandals that have plagued the Holy See, Pope Francis appointed a five-person crew solely tasked to wash the bank clean. This only goes to show that Pope Francis means business as he pressure the Vatican's administrators' to shape up.

As a result more evils were being 'exorcised' out of the holy institution.

In a report from Reuters on Tuesday, big-wig managers for Vatican bank, Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), Director Paolo Cipriani and Massimo Tulli resigned after another Vatican scandal involving Monsignor Nunzio Scarano.

Monsignor Scarano was accused of helping two people in smuggling 20 million euro to Italy from Switzerland. Ernest von Freyberg, the German president for IOR, will temporarily assume the position of the manager until such time that a replacement is selected. The IOR had also decided to create a new position of chief risk officer. The person to be appointed for the position will be task to work on improving the bank's compliance with financial regulations.

  In another report from The Washington Post, the Vatican had made public their official statement about the resignation of the IOR top managers. The statement said that Mr Cipriani and Mr Tulli resigned "in the best interest of the institute and the Holy See."

Mr Cipriani had long been under investigation by Rome prosecutors in 2010 for allegedly violating Italy's anti-money laundering laws, following the seizure by financial police of 23 million euro from an account in a Rome bank. Mr Cipriani was acquitted from the case and the money was then released.

However, the IOR had never escaped the scrutiny of the prosecutors since then. In fact, Pope Francis expressed just recently his fear that the IO is being use as offshore tax haven.

With all the scandals that the Vatican had been associated with in the past,  the Vatican institution was being dragged to a deeper pit of shame.

 A report from the Associated Press said that former Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan had allegedly paid some abusers to leave priesthood as a cover-up for more scandalous expose within the institution.

Mr Dolan's act was exposed through letters and documents he sent to Vatican officials.

According to the Associated Press' report, "Dolan's correspondence with Vatican officials and priests accused of sexual abuse was included in about 6,000 pages of documents the Archdiocese of Milwaukee released Monday as part of a deal reached in federal bankruptcy court with clergy sex abuse victims suing it for fraud. Victims say the archdiocese transferred problem priests to new churches without warning parishioners and covered up priests' crimes for decades."

The 6,000 pages of documents revealed details of Mr Dolan's plan in paying the priests accused of different abuse to voluntarily leave priesthood. The documents also revealed that he transferred $57 million worth of cemetery care funds into an unknown trust. Later, he planned to file for bankruptcy to cover the scandal.

The documents released were a scandalous discovery as Mr Dolan now takes the role of cardinal of the Archdiocese of New York. He has also become the United States' most prominent Catholic official as merited by his position as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Contact: editor@ibtimes.com




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