VATICAN CITY
The Atlantic Wire
Seth Abramovitch
Today was a joyful one at the Vatican, as 22 archbishops from around the world were elevated to the elite rank of cardinal — but behind the scenes, things are considerably less harmonious. In a mystery befitting a Dan Brown novel, a series of unflattering leaks have emerged from the Vatican in a relatively short period of time, Time magazine reports. The leaks are serious enough that Federico Lombardi, a spokesman for the Holy See, issued a statement comparing them to Wikileaks’ own targeting of the United States Government, implying they were being released by someone looking to harm the church’s reputation. “We must resist and not allow ourselves to be swallowed by the whirlpool of confusion, which is what those with bad intentions want,” Lombardi wrote.
The most damaging leaks emerged in late January, The Washington Post reports, when an Italian television program produced letters exchanged between the Holy See’s ambassador yo the U.S., Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who was overseeing the Vatican’s financial reforms committee until October 2011:
Naming names close to Bertone, they make allegations of crooked contracting and of a campaign of defamation against the [Vatican] secretary of state [Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone].
Bertone, the Pope’s second-in-command, was “appointed in 2006 run the day-to-day affairs of the Vatican while the pope focused on affairs of the spirit,” Time writes, but has “faced fierce opposition from the Vatican’s diplomatic staff, which has made little secret that it regards him as an outsider.” Bertone’s predecessor, Cardinal Angelo Sodana, refused to vacate his office for months after Bertone started the job, and the secretary of state has been accused of jockeying to put an Italian in line as the Pope’s successor.
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