VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider
Six months have passed since the IOR’s director Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was dismissed but the Vatican Bank is still without leader. His successor will not be Italian
ANDREA TORNIELLI
Vatican City
The IOR (Institute for Works of Religion) board, which is still leaderless having controversially dismissed its president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, meets tomorrow. Vatican sources have confirmed that no announcement of a successor is expected any time soon and that the appointment of the new president – a long and well-thought out process – will take place in 2013.
The lay members of the Vatican bank are: German acting president, Ronaldo Hermann Schmitz, of Deutsche Bank; the American, Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus and one of the signatories of the accusation act against Gitti Tedeschi which was deliberately leaked to the papers; the Spaniard Manuel Soto Serrano of Banco Santander and Antonio Maria Marocco, a notary from the Italian city of Turin. Together, they will discuss future arrangements and ways in which to bring the IOR in line with international money laundering directives. No significant updates are expected, however, on the name of the new president. This will be another point that will be discussed during the meeting.
The past few months seem to have proven that the IOR functions just fine even without a president. A number of names ended up on the list of figures that could potentially succeed Gotti Tedeschi. The choice will be made very carefully: timing, prudence and careful evaluation are crucial and show how delicate a choice this will be and how much care the Vatican wishes to take in appointing the person for the job. The Vatican will have to choose a distinguished European figure of international standing and not an Italian. The person chosen will have to guide the bank out of the shallows, where it has remained for some time and at the same time use teamwork to guarantee the bank’s autonomy, making it less “Italian”.
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