VATICAN CITY
The Economist

ONE area where Francis has managed to make progress is in cleaning up the Vatican’s largely secret financial machinery. Most of the accounts at the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), or Vatican bank, that belong to people not directly associated with the church have been closed. The Vatican has invited scrutiny by Moneyval, an international financial watchdog. It has acquired an auditor-general. And by the end of last year the Holy See’s regulatory body, the Financial Information Authority (AIF), had found 23 cases of suspected financial hanky-panky and sent them to the Promoter of Justice, the Vatican’s prosecutor.

Until last year none had led to a prosecution. But according to the Promoter of Justice’s annual report, submitted last month, the first two cases went to court in 2016. According to a Vatican source (Vatican justice is not exactly transparent), one of the trials…