ROME
Buenos Aires Herald
ROME — The scale of the challenge facing Pope Francis as he struggles to overhaul the Vatican’s finances will be laid bare today by the publication of confidential documents and private recordings of his meetings.
Two new books, released in Italy and other countries today, will highlight the secrecy, mismanagement and huge wealth at the heart of the scandal-ridden Catholic Church. They depict a Vatican plagued by mismanagement, greed, cronyism and corruption. One of the books even quotes a secretly recorded conversation involving the pontiff.
“Without exaggerating, we can say that a good part of the costs are out of control,” Pope Francis says in the recording, according to Merchants in the Temple, by Gianluigi Nuzzi.
The author writes of irregularities in the funding of causes to declare saints in the Roman Catholic Church, the purported diverting of funds intended for the poor to plug administrative deficits and the lavish lifestyle of some cardinals.
Interestingly, Nuzzi also comments on the resistance to Francis’ desired reforms, saying the Argentine pontiff often encounters “entrenched and tenacious resistance” to his agenda.
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