VATICAN CITY
Washington Post
By Alessandro Speciale| Religion News Service, Updated: Friday, February 17
VATICAN CITY — It isn’t anywhere on the official agenda, but as Roman Catholic leaders meet in Rome this weekend, looming in the background will be a recent string of Vatican leaks that reveal a bitter power struggle among the hierarchy.
In recent weeks, several confidential memos and documents by senior Vatican officials have appeared in the Italian media. The leak is “unprecedented in recent history,” says Massimo Faggioli, a church historian at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.
The scandal started in late January when an Italian television program showed letters written to Pope Benedict XVI by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican’s U.S. ambassador, asserting widespread corruption and waste in the Vatican procurement process. Vigano, who at the time was secretary general of the office that oversees Vatican City, begged Benedict not to send him to the United States. His removal would cause “disarray and discouragement” in those who shared his anti-corruption struggle, Vigano said.
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