Vatican Finances: The Long Journey Towards Transparency

From the start of his pontificate, Pope Francis has striven to continue the reform of the Vatican’s finances, which had been painfully started by his predecessor. But the path has turned out to be full of pitfalls, in an environment Askanews describes as “opaque if not hostile.”

The appointment of Cardinal George Pell as the prefect of the secretariat for the economy in 2014 and his proverbial hostility towards “Italians,” coupled with his tough management methods, have largely contributed to robbing the prelates of the Curia. But we are all aware of Cardinal Pell’s experience of wandering in the desert: after a trial, a rejected appeal, incarceration, a retrial, and exoneration by the court, the high prelate has returned to the Vatican, cleansed of all suspicion.

During this time period, a financial scandal broke out in London: in the center of the British capital, the Secretary of State made a dubious investment which would have cost the Vatican several tens of millions of euros. The Holy See’s justice system led the investigation and implicated several high Vatican officials. Cardinal Becciu, deputy secretary of state at the time of the incident, was sacked at the end of September by the pope himself.

But this financial scandal has shown that the Vatican has managed to develop its own “antibodies”: the complaints now come from the ecclesial institution itself. It was indeed the Institute of Roman Works (IOR) that denounced the suspicious movements of money to London to the auditor’s office and to the Vatican magistracy. In the Pope’s image: “This is the first time that the ruse has been discovered from the inside.”

New Regulations and New Entities

For several months, a series of strong decisions have been taken: in the spring, the Pope signed a new management code for public contracts which represents, according to Vatican specialists, “a veritable cultural revolution,” within the smallest state of the world.

At the end of the summer, Peter's successor allowed Moneyval - the Council of Europe committee in charge of the fight against money laundering and the financing of international terrorism - to investigate in the Vatican: never before seen. In the process, the prefect of the secretariat for the economy, Fr. Juan Antonio Guerrero, and Alessandro Cassinis Righini, acting auditor general, signed a memorandum of understanding on the fight against corruption.

At the end of August, the Pope removed the management of several portfolios from the Secretariat of State: Peter’s Pence, the Paul VI Fund for Extraordinary Needs, and an additional reserved fund, now come under the control of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (Apsa).

Finally, last October, Francis created the Committee for Reserved Questions, provided for by the new management code, whose purpose is to validate financial transactions that must remain secret: it is no longer possible for a member of the Curia to apply to the Pope to have him sign the allocation of an extraordinary fund, without the approval of the new commission.

A final stage of the reform is about to materialize. It was announced by Mgr. Nunzio Galantino, president of Apsa, in an interview with Famiglia Cristiana: “the approval of the statutes of an investment committee, made up of high-level external professionals, is in progress,” assured the prelate in November 2020.

Its function would be to “guarantee the ethical character of investments inspired by the social doctrine of the Church and their profitability.” In the Vatican, they are said to be ready to turn the page as quickly as possible on the financial scandals which have “deteriorated the message of the Gospel.”

To reestablish it in its truth, it would still be necessary to restore on solid foundations, the luminous and lasting teaching of the Church and to purge it of all scandals against the faith: but that is quite another matter ...