VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register
NEWS ANALYSIS: Cardinal George Pell’s Secretariat of the Economy has had its wings clipped in recent weeks, in terms of its authority to oversee the Vatican’s financial operations.
BY EDWARD PENTIN
07/25/2016
VATICAN CITY — The Secretariat for the Economy has suffered two blows to its authority in the past few weeks in what inside sources say is a concerted effort to obstruct revealing financial information and possible misconduct in the Roman Curia.
However, some of the decisions have helped to clarify roles in the financial reform process and, together with new monitoring procedures, could significantly help to root out mismanagement and corruption in the long term.
On June 10, the Vatican announced it was ending an external audit of the Holy See’s finances by the accountancy giant PricewaterhouseCoopers. The audit, which cost around €500,000 ($550,000) to complete, had already been suspended in April, just four months after it had begun, on the grounds that the Vatican wanted to obtain “clarifications.”
The Vatican said in its June 10 statement that the financial scrutiny would now be executed by the Vatican’s own auditor general, and that PwC would henceforth “play an assisting role” and be “available to those dicasteries that wish to avail themselves of its support and consulting services.” It argued that having an external audit carried out by its own auditor general is “normally the case for every sovereign state.”
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