VATICAN CITY
Los Angeles Times
By TOM KINGTON
Pope Francis has taken action that appears to confirm his faith in the controversial head of a task force he created to clean up the Vatican’s finances.
On the pope’s orders, new legal statutes were published Tuesday cementing most of the powers that were given to the Secretariat for the Economy, which Francis set up a year ago and is headed by the outspoken Australian Cardinal George Pell. The statutes went into effect Sunday.
The Vatican’s hitherto murky finances will be overseen by the Council for the Economy, made up of eight prelates and seven lay people. The council will formulate policy, and the Secretariat for the Economy will carry it out. An independent auditor will be given free rein to check the accounts of Vatican departments.
Pell, who has said he discovered millions of euros that did not show up on the Vatican’s books and has suggested that Italian accounting is slipshod, has ruffled feathers and faced accusations of centralizing power at the new secretariat, designed to bring transparency to the Vatican.
Proof that he was making enemies within the Vatican’s bureaucracy came Friday when an Italian magazine published leaked documents suggesting Pell had spent more than half a million dollars in six months on his new department, flying business class and paying assistants large salaries, while spending $2,800 on robes at a Rome tailor and more than $50,000 on furniture.
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