UNITED STATES
The American Conservative

By ROD DREHER • July 19, 2013

Sandro Magister, one of the most respected journalists covering the Vatican, exposes Monsigner Battista Ricca, a Vatican insider who has been elevated to head of the Vatican bank — also known as the Institute for the Works Of Religion (IOR) — by the new pope, and charged with cleaning up corruption in its ranks. Excerpts:

Before the appointment, Francis had been shown, as is customary, the personal file on Ricca, in which he had not found anything unseemly. He had also heard from various personalities of the curia, and none of them had raised objections.

Just one week after appointing the “prelate,” however, during the same days in which he was meeting with the apostolic nuncios who had come to Rome from all over the world, the pope became aware, from multiple sources, of some episodes from…