VATICAN CITY
Boston.com

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Dozens and perhaps hundreds of widows and Vatican pensioners recently came in for a rude surprise: The Vatican bank told them they had to close their accounts or risk losing access to their money — all in the name of Pope Francis’ reform efforts, The Associated Press has learned.

The bank now says it was all a ‘‘technical error’’ and that the widows and pensioners are being kept on as clients, amid the bank’s highly-publicized plan to close so-called ‘‘lay accounts’’ as it tries to mend relations with Italian authorities who have suspected that Italians were using the bank as a tax haven.

It’s all come as a big embarrassment for an institution that is trying to fend off accusations of mismanagement and corruption.

‘‘In some cases old ladies got nasty letters,’’ Max Hohenberg, spokesman for the Institute for Religious Works —…