Pope Francis' fight for transparency

Andrea Tornielli
Vatican Insider
June 29, 2013

The issues of the Vatican Bank’s management and the Holy See’s finances have resurfaced following the scandalous arrest of a prelate employed as an accountant in the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), a Vatican unit that deals with property owned by the Holy See. Pope Francis’ decision three days ago to set up a surprise commission of inquiry into the Vatican bank’s activities can now be understood in a different light. The decision shows Francis does not intend to blindly believe the words of reassurance addressed to him after the election.

The prosecutors will verify the extent of Nunzio Scarano’s involvement in an alleged money-laundering operation. 600 thousand Euros in cash are said to have left one of Mgr. Scarano’s two IOR bank accounts in 2009. The prelate is under investigation by prosecutors in his native city of Salerno, southern Italy and now, prosecutors in Rome have ordered his arrest, after accusing him of organising a daring operation to smuggle twenty million Euros into Italy, on board a jet from Switzerland. Holy See authorities have said they will cooperate fully with investigators. Prosecutors described how the prelate transferred huge sums of money with complete nonchalance: the Vatican Financial Information Authority which monitors Vatican finances had been keeping track of the cash transfers made from Mgr. Scarano’s accounts but the decision to suspend him from his position was taken after the findings of the inquiry carried out by the Italian prosecutors.

In 2010 Pope Benedict XVI called the Church to a new path of transparency, to bring the IOR and all Holy See institutions in line with international anti-money laundering standards. A path that ended up being filled with obstacles. It is evidently impossible to boil everything that is going on down to a number of small isolated cases, glossing the situation over with a series of operations that give a good image of the IOR, restoring public credibility.

There is no doubt that the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) has done and continues to do a great job in supporting numerous Church bodies in poor countries, even though this positive aspect of Church history always goes unnoticed. But what is also clear is that a number of problems to do with management, staff and attitude have accumulated. Anti-money laundering and transparency regulations need people to actually implement them to ensure that some over-confident IOR account holders doesn’t start thinking illicit actions will go unpunished.

Only those who weren’t listening or who pretended not to listen to the messages Pope’ Francis has been repeatedly sending out in the first months of his pontificate could have thought that the management of the Vatican’s finances could go on unchanged. The phrases used by Francis: “St. Peter didn’t have a bank account” and “the IOR is necessary but only to a certain extent” were not just said for effect. Bergoglio’s is not just a falsely rigid approach. The Pope has not used the media to save the face of the institution.

The quiet strength of his approach lies in his belief that even in situations like these, what comes through is nature of the Church itself and the adequacy of its actions. The Church must now finish what Francis’ predecessor started, “in order to allow the Gospel’s principles to permeate into economic and financial activities.”