VATICAN (CNS): Before the Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic halted all public audiences at the Vatican, Pope Francis met members of the Vatican City State court and spoke of the Vatican’s “commitment to fight illegality in the field of finance at the international level.”
The pope said on February 15, “These actions have recently brought to light suspicious financial situations, which aside from their possible unlawfulness, are not in keeping with the nature and purpose of the church and have generated disorientation and anxiety in the community of the faithful.”
The pursuit to reform Vatican financial procedures took a surprising turn of events in late September with departure of Angelo Cardinal Becciu, the former prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, who was forced to offer his resignation to the pope on September 24 (Sunday Examiner, October 4).
According to Cardinal Becciu, he is accused of embezzling an estimated €100,000 ($909,724) of Vatican funds and redirecting them to Spes, a Caritas organisation run by his brother, Tonino Becciu, in his home Diocese of Ozieri, Sardinia.
Pope Francis signed a new set of laws in June to prevent fraud and corruption, including barring Vatican employees from awarding contracts to their relatives for the purchase of goods, property and services.
Cardinal Becciu, who also had to renounce the rights and privileges of being a cardinal, strongly denied any wrongdoing during a news conference on September 25 and said that although he received no formal notification from authorities that he was under investigation or being charged with a crime, he hopes to clear his name.
For some, the resignation of the Italian cardinal, whose name also turned up in connection with a questionable property deal in London’s posh Chelsea district, a purchase which incurred major debts, was an indication that the pope’s financial reforms, instituted gradually over the past seven years, are finally having an impact.
Cardinal Becciu’s role in the Secretariat of State’s purchase of a majority stake in the London property deal is likely among the “suspicious financial situations” the pope referred to in his speech to the Vatican court. The cardinal insisted there was nothing wrong with the purchase.
Four days after accepting Cardinal Becciu’s resignation, Pope Francis appointed a new “promoter of applied justice”—in effect a prosecuting attorney for specific crimes—to the Vatican court, choosing Gianluca Perone, a professor of commercial law.
One question remaining is whether funds from the Peter’s Pence collection were used to finance the deal. Peter’s Pence is a papal fund used for charity, but also to support the running of the Roman Curia and Vatican embassies around the world.
Cardinal Becciu consistently denied Peter’s Pence funds were used to purchase the London property; the money, he said, came from a fund within the Secretariat of State.
However, when asked by a journalist on September 25 if the money in the Secretariat of State fund came from Peter’s Pence, Cardinal Becciu said, “Yes.”
According to a September 28 report in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Pope Francis has taken away the Secretariat of State’s access to the fund.
The fund, the report stated, now will be managed by Bishop Nunzio Galantino, president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See, which handles the Vatican’s investment portfolio and real estate holdings, and by Jesuit Father Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves, George Cardinal Pell’s successor at the Secretariat for the Economy.
With that move, the continuing Vatican investigations and the abrupt dismissal of a top Vatican official, Pope Francis has made it clear that he has no qualms about cracking a few eggs to make an omelet.
