Procedures have begun for the nomination of a new president for the Vatican bank (IOR), while the media’s “glasnost” campaign continues. Journalists are the second after the ambassadors accredited to the Holy See to be received in the institute for a briefing on the progress made in the field of transparency and the implementation of anti-money laundering regulations.
Looming in the background, however, is the unresolved question of who will take over the management of the Vatican's finances.
“It was not the Italian Communist Party (PCI) that invented democratic centralism, it was us,” said one elderly Curia cardinal, an experienced diplomat who had headed important Vatican dicasteries during the papacy of John Paul II.
Indeed, the idea of reciprocal horizontal control within the group of directors is illustrated by the subdivision of roles and responsibilities in the management of the Vatican’s finances.
“There is no such thing as a bursar in the Vatican, perhaps because out of the twelve apostles it was Judas who kept the “kitty”,” the cardinal commented ironically.
The choice of director lies with a clerical majority.
The Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), commonly known as the Vatican bank, is made up of a lay board and a supervisory commission of cardinals.
The Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (A.P.S.A) is both the Holy See’s central bank and the dicastery of the treasury and is divided into an ordinary and an extraordinary section: in practice it oversees the “Vatican treasury” and works in the securities and estate markets.
The task of checking financial bodies’ balance sheets lies with the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See which also acts a s a Court of Auditors.
The Vatican City Governorate and Propaganda Fide, the Congregation for the Evangelisation of the Peoples also have autonomous balance sheets and administrations.
The Congregation for the Evangelisation of the Peoples is the Vatican’s highly powerful missions’ ministry, whose jurisdiction stretches over hundreds of dioceses in the Third World.
The turbulence surrounding Vatican finances is a heavy burden and a legacy of Karol Wojtyla’s geopolitical papacy.
Indeed, Benedict XVI’s Curia seems like it is the result of a number of “geological” eras of ecclesiastical hierarchies. Various groups of prelates belonging to different schools and traditions overlap in the Holy See often ending up on collision courses. This creates a climate of conflict that rocks the central government and the universal Church to its foundations.
Benedict XVI found himself having to manage the emergency situation created by the mobilisation begun by his predecessor in order to bring the “cold war” to an end.
In many ways Joseph Ratzinger was successful in resolving problems that were the result of decades of mistakes and gaps in the Roman Curia’s bureaucratic organisation.
In the Curia John Paul II had conceded unlimited freedom of action to controversial representatives of the financial community who were able to support him in his historic battle against communism.
After the fall of the Berlin wall, that “weapon” was not converted back into ordinary administration of the Curia machine.
After over a quarter of a century of Wojtylian monocracy, his successor to the throne of Peter was forced to cut back the powers of leading figures in the world of Catholicism such as Fr. Marcial Maciel.
In exchange for their help in the fight against communism, they enjoyed extended moral “exemption”, that is complicity, conspiracy of silence and cover ups at the top of the Vatican pyramid, to protect them from the sex and corruption scandals they were involved in.
This all ended when Benedict XVI was elected Pope.
But the backlashes and reactions to these scandals are still strong.
The Vatileaks saga proves this.