VATICAN CITY
Crux
By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor November 8, 2015
This week brought fresh embarrassments for the Vatican on the financial front, raising questions anew about whether Pope Francis’ pledge to impose transparency and accountability can succeed in an institution historically more inclined to cronyism and operating under cover of darkness.
It began with the arrest of two Vatican insiders on charges of leaking secret reports to journalists. Both are former members of a now-dissolved commission created by Francis in the summer of 2013 to get a handle on the financial situation.
Mid-week, two new books on the Vatican’s money woes appeared, to some extent based on those leaked documents.
The books are Avarizia (“Avarice”), by Italian journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi, and Via Crucis (released in English as “Merchants in the Temple”) by Gianluigi Nuzzi, another Italian journalist who was at the heart of the Vatican leaks affair under Pope Benedict XVI.
Both offer enough ugly detail to raise fears about whether reform efforts can prevail.
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