VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio
As part of its ongoing effort to combat charges of secrecy and financial scandals, the Holy See’s Institute for Works of Religion – often called the Vatican bank – this week invited a group of around 35 ambassadors to make a fact-finding visit. The diplomats were encouraged to ask questions about the Institute and the services it provides, as well as about its response to money laundering investigations and compliance with international standards.
Among those who visited the Institute on Tuesday was Britain’s ambassador to the Holy See, Nigel Baker, who talked to Philippa Hitchen about this important process of opening the bank up to very public scrutiny……
Listen:
“For some time ambassadors have been encouraging the IOR (Istituto per le Opere di Religione) to open up their doors to help us understand them better. Very often we hear fairly justified complaints that there’s a lot of commentary about the IOR, the so called Vatican bank, that’s either ignorant or not well founded or very much based in the past. So we’ve been saying for some time – and we had a chance as European ambassadors to talk to the board of IOR some months ago – well, we’d like to come and see for ourselves. So they invited us to visit, to hear what they had to say, to see a presentation of what they really are up to now, their great efforts, stimulated especially by pope Benedict XVI, to improve their levels of transparency and compliance, particularly in relation to a range of international norms and the processes they’re going through to reach that and fundamentally to demystify their work. So we found it extremely useful, we had the chance to ask questions and I understand they will be doing something also for financial journalists in the near future – which I encourage.
Do you think this will be enough to lay to rest the concerns?
Not immediately no, I think it’s a process. It’s only really been a year or so since new regulations have come into place improving the governance of IOR, improving its compliance with a range of recommendations of the international financial action task force. It is only since last year that the Council of Europe’s expert committee – called Moneyval for short – on money laundering and financing of terrorism has had the chance to come to the Vatican to look at the IOR and other Vatican institutions that manage finances to see how they’re doing, to provide recommendations and advice and to rate them, later on this year, against a range of international norms. I think that process will be bumpy because there will be some things where the IOR can’t yet say we’ve reached full international compliance and indeed other Vatican institutions.
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