UNITED STATES
The Jewish Week
Submitted by Douglas Bloomfield on Sun, 05/20/2012
The Vatican has branded as “criminal” the publication this weekend of confidential papal documents exposing the internal power struggles surrounding possible corruption and mismanagement involving international money laundering, the Associated Press reported.
Already dubbed “Vatileaks,” the scandal had been brewing for months and was further inflamed with Saturday’s publication of “His Holiness,” a book by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, that included a trove of Pope Benedict XVI’s correspondence.
Vatican officials are threatening criminal action against the author who exposed the alleged corruption and infighting. Keeping secrets of wrongdoing, financial and moral, is not unusual for the Vatican, where it is apparently believed that confession may be good for the soul but not for the Church.
Sixty-seven years after the fall of the Third Reich, the Vatican remains the only country that refuses to open its Holocaust-era archives, fueling speculation that it has a lot to hide. Despite repeated promises to be more forthcoming, the Vatican has been slow and parsimonious about opening those records to scholars, both Jewish and Catholic.
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