VATICAN CITY
The Tablet (UK)
05 November 2015 by Christopher Lamb in Rome
Sadly, allegations of money mismanagement by the Vatican are nothing new.
For years, many have assumed the Holy See was a) sitting on a lot of money and b) not being transparent with how it was spending it.
What is new, however, is that the Church now has a Pope who is serious about changing this. He has already started with a clean up of the leadership of the Vatican bank and financial structures.
What two new books show – one by Gianluigi Nuzzi, of the original Vati-leaks fame and the other by Emiliano Fitipaldi – is the depth of the problems he faced in 2013 when he became Pope and the continuing challenges.
Among the details the books reveal are:
* In 2011-12 the majority of a large fund, Peter’s Pence, contributed to by Catholics from across the world, worth €378 million, was being used to pay for the Vatican bureaucracy. The Holy See have stressed this fund is used for a variety of causes at the Pope’s discretion.On 29 and 30 there was a theft of documents from the archive of Cosea, a commission that was conducting an overhaul of Vatican administration and finances.
* In 2014 there was a theft of documents from the archive of Cosea, a commission that was conducting an overhaul of Vatican administration and finances.
* A lay postulator for a saint’s cause asked for €40,000 in order to make preliminary investigations
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