UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture
By Phil Lawler Jun 10, 2016
Another scandal is brewing at the Vatican.
This time the subject will not be sex, but that other rich lode of corruption: money.
Shady deals at the Vatican bank, the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), have brought disgrace on the Holy See in the past (if you don’t know what I mean, search on “Roberto Calvi”), and more conventional problems in the past few years (try “Nunzio Scarano”). But now the IOR is under new management, run by lay professionals, and appears fully committed to transparency.
Unfortunately the offices of the Roman Curia are not ready to make the same commitment. Today’s announcement that the Vatican will not proceed with an external audit, but rely instead on internal controls, represents a victory for the sort of halfway disclosure that Richard Nixon characterized as the “modified, limited hangout”—a commitment to (as one high-ranking Vatican official put it) “full accountability, yes, but let’s keep our problems in-house.”
In today’s announcement the Vatican press office took special pains to deny the charges made by some analysts that the audit by PricewaterhouseCooper had been suspended because some Vatican agencies (notably the Secretariat of State) were dragging their feet on financial disclosures. “The commitment to the economic-financial audit of the Holy See and of the State of Vatican City has been, and remains, a priority,” the statement insisted.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.