CANADA
The Globe and Mail
JOHN DOYLE
The Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Mar. 15 2014
Is it drama that you want? Is it, perchance, stories of seediness, mobsters and corruption in high places? How high the place? Well, there’s the Vatican.
Few dramas airing right now can match the story told in Holy Money (Sunday, CBC NN 10 p.m., on The Passionate Eye). Oh sure, the current Pope has the image of an awesome guy – for a Pope, anyways. Man of the people, sensible guy with old-fashioned values and an appetite for change. He is swiftly remaking the image of the Papacy.
But image is surface. What’s really going on in the Vatican is a high-stakes battle over money and power. Pope Francis, we’re told, wants to shift the institution away from a culture of crime and crookedness.
Such as? “Priests charged with corruption, donations diverted to pay for sex, dioceses in bankruptcy, money-laundering inquiries and, at the core of it all, the dirty dealings of the Vatican Bank,” according to promotional material for Holy Money. “The foundations of the Holy See are being rocked by one financial scandal after the other and, despite the appearances, Pope Francis faces an uphill struggle.”
In the doc, the man asserting all this is not some tabloid reporter: He’s an expert on the Italian Mob. That’s John Dickie, a University College of London historian and the author of the book Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia.
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