VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast
Barbie Latza Nadeau
Secretly bugged priests, missing multimillions, and possible threats to Pope Francis’s life—new allegations deepen the Catholic Church’s VatiLeaks scandal.
VATICAN CITY — There is nothing like a good old Vatican scandal to bring Rome to its knees.
Never mind that the city government is already in complete shambles on the eve of the Vatican’s Holy Jubilee, which could double the many millions of visitors to the Eternal City over the next year. No, instead of finalizing preparations for what should be a feather in the pope’s mitre, the Vatican is bracing itself for the release on Thursday of two books that seek to expose the sinister side of everything from saint-making to the very sanctity of the Holy See.
On Monday, by way of preemptive measure, the Vatican confirmed that laywoman Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, along with a Spanish monsignor named Lucio Vallejo Balda, had been arrested for allegedly leaking documents to journalists. Both had been on a special commission to advise the pope’s men in charge with reforming the Vatican’s broken financial system, which had, under previous papacies, been accused of money laundering and other unholy financial practices.
The Daily Beast obtained advance copies of both books ahead of their Thursday release, and both seem likely receptacles for the latest chapter of the VatiLeaks scandal, which began when Pope Benedict XVI’s butler was arrested in 2012 for stealing secret documents off his boss’s desk.
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