Pope Francis, who has said he wants the Catholic Church to be a model
of austerity and honesty, could restructure or even close the Vatican’s
scandal-ridden bank.
The closure may be as part of a broad review of its troubled bureaucracy, Vatican sources say.
Francis, who inherited a Church mired in scandals over priests’
sexual abuse of children and the leak of confidential documents alleging
corruption and infighting in the Vatican’s central administration, is
mulling his options as he sets the tone for a reformed and humbler Holy
See.
One of the tests of his papacy will be what he does about the bank
which has regularly damaged the Vatican’s image over three decades and
faces growing calls for reform.
Last year a European anti-money laundering body found that the bank –
formally called the Institute for Works of Religion and known by the
Italian acronym IOR – had failed to meet some of its standards on
fighting financial crimes.
“Certainly if the pope wants to, he can close the IOR,” said a
senior Vatican official, a prelate who had years of experience of
directly dealing with the bank.
“The future of the IOR was one of main issues Francis would have to
confront now that the whirlwind of his surprise election was slowing,”
he said.
Any significant reforms of the IOR would not come for some time and
would probably be made after changes at the Secretariat of State, the
central Church department which was at the centre of a “Vatileaks”
scandal that rocked the Holy See last year.
These changes would include the replacement of its head, Cardinal
Tarciscio Bertone, who is number two in the Vatican hierarchy and has
widely been blamed for failing to prevent the many mishaps and
infighting in Church government during the eight-year pontificate of
Pope Benedict.
“It will take time to change the bank,” said another Vatican
official who is not a prelate. Both officials spoke on condition of
anonymity.”
The second official believed it was more likely that the bank, which
manages money for the Vatican, international Catholic religious
institutions and orders of priests and nuns, would undergo “serious
restructuring”rather than being closed.
“But I would not exclude anything, including closing it down the line. Francis is doing surprising things every day,” he said.
Both officials said the new pope might, as a first step, set up a
committee to advise him on possible changes to the Vatican’s financial
structure.
The first sign of change would be a new secretary of state. “It’s not
a question of if but when Bertone leaves,” the senior prelate said.
It remains to be seen who the pope chooses as new secretary of state.”
The basic failings of the Curia, as the Vatican’s central
administration is known, were aired, sometimes passionately, at
closed-door meetings of cardinals before they retired into the conclave
that elected Francis on March 13.
“The Curia did not come out smelling like a rose from those
meetings,” the senior prelate said, adding that many cardinals had
demanded explanations of the scandals and information on how the bank is
run and whether it should exist at all.
“The IOR is not an essential part of the ministry of the Holy Father
as a successor of St. Peter,” Cardinal John Onaiyekan of Nigeria told
an Italian television station before the election of Francis.
“The IOR is not fundamental, it is not sacramental, it is not part of Church dogma.”
Anger at the Italian prelates who mostly run the Curia was one of
the reasons that the cardinals chose the first non-European pope for
1,300 years at the conclave and quashed the chances of one of the
frontrunners, Milan Archbishop Angelo Scola.
The next secretary of state, the senior source said, would have to
instil a new style of “collaboration and service”among offices of the
Curia, whose image was badly stained by the “Vatileaks” scandal.
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