VATICAN CITY
Sydney Morning Herald

November 27, 2015

Desmond O’Grady

Cardinal George Pell is fighting battles on two fronts, one financial and the other in the realm of church doctrine, an area in which he managed to irk Pope Francis.

The Australian cardinal is attacked in two new books by Italian journalists as a “spendthrift moraliser” who spent €500,000 ($730,000) in his first six months as Prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy.

The journalists, Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, are being tried in the Vatican for using its secret documents, together with three Vatican employees for supplying them. The trio of employees worked for COSEA, a now dissolved commission set up by Pope Francis to identify financial situations needing reform after much mismanagement and corruption.

Fittipaldi’s book is called Avarizia (Avarice), Nuzzi’s book has been translated into English as Merchants in the Temple.

The COSEA documents portray…