UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Phyllis Zagano | Feb. 26, 2014 Just Catholic
Will Pope Francis’ new money lord make any difference? Australian Cardinal George Pell, 72, who moves to Rome next month to head a new Vatican office, is not known as a financial expert.
Australian sex-abuse critics call his appointment a golden parachute, one that may touch down in a palatial suite in the AUS$30 million “Domus Australia” guesthouse Pell dedicated in 2011.
Of course Francis is trying to do the right thing. Religion and money are never a good mix, and a long history of scandals only complicates the task of getting the Vatican bureaucracy in order. As Cardinal Prefect of the new dicastery, the Secretariat for the Economy, Pell reports directly to the pope. He also reports to the new Council for the Economy, eight cardinals and seven lay experts projected to analyze internal controls, transparency, and governance. In addition, there will be an Auditor-General empowered to check the books of any Holy See component.
Pell’s mandate appears to be oversight of any money the Vatican touches, particularly that in the Administration of the Patrimony for the Holy See (APSA), which manages Vatican-owned money and property, and the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), also known as the Vatican Bank, which manages between $6 billion to $7 billion dollars in cash and securities owned by various clergy, religious orders, dioceses and church-affiliated persons and institutions.
Both are ripe fields for fraud, waste and abuse. The lack of transparency at the Vatican Bank, which has 19,000 clients worldwide and does a quarter of its business in cash, has long been cause for scandal. No one knows where it invests its funds. In 1982, the head of the collapsed Banco Amrosiano, Roberto Calvi, was found hanged in London. The Vatican Bank owned controlling shares of Banco Ambrosiano. More recently, Italian police arrested Msgr. Nunzio Scarano, former head of accounting at APSA, on suspicion of using the Vatican Bank to move money for “others.” He was also accused of trying to smuggle $20 million Euro by private plane from Switzerland.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.