The Vatican’s leaks scandal intensified yesterday as a book detailed the mismanagement and internal resistance that has been thwarting Pope Francis’s financial reform efforts. The saga began in 2012 with an earlier Nuzzi expose, peaked with the conviction of Pope Benedict XVI’s butler on charges he supplied Nuzzi with stolen documents, and ended a year later when a clearly exhausted Benedict resigned, unable to carry on.
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Francis was tasked by his cardinal electors to stamp his authority on the bickering Curia, the Church’s governing body, and clean up the Vatican bank – but the fresh leaks looked set to fuel criticisms of his reform programme.
The Vatican described the books as “fruit of a grave betrayal of the trust given by the pope, and, as far as the authors go, of an operation to take advantage of a gravely illicit act of handing over confidential documentation”.
The twin arrests came just days before two Italian authors are due to release books that their publishers say will reveal new evidence of scandals in the Vatican and alleged conspiracies by the old guard to undermine Francis’ reform efforts.
Maintenance and restoration contracts were handed out at inflated prices, Vatican real estate is worth seven times what it is listed on the account books and the city-state’s pension fund is fast approaching collapse, he writes.
That two of the commission members now have been arrested in an investigation over leaked documents is a remarkable new chapter in the Vatileaks saga, but it’s unclear if the investigation will stop with them.
The book says that if market rates were applied, homes given to employees would generate income of €19.4m rather than the €6.2m now recorded, while other “institutional” buildings which today generate no income would generate income of €30.4m.
Emiliano Fittipaldi and Gianluigi Nuzzi have not revealed their sources.
The Vatican also turned a blind eye on the bank accounts of the “postulators”, whose job is to vet candidates for sainthood, Nuzzi recounted.
According to Nuzzi’s book, one high-ranking Vatican official, Monsignor Giuseppe Sciacca, in order to improve his apartment, took upon himself to bring down a wall separating his flat from his neighbour’s.
Italian public relations expert Francesca Chaouqui, arrested for allegedly stealing confidential documents from the Vatican, said Wednesday it was her co-accused, a Spanish priest, who secretly recorded the pope’s conversations. The journalist reports claims that a foundation set up to support a children’s hospital paid 200,000 euros toward the renovation of the apartment of the Vatican’s number two at the time, Tarciso Bertone.
The Pope, who lives in a hotel room, summarily demoted Sciacca, forcing him to move out.
Regarding the use of the large amount of property belonging to the Vatican, Fr. Lombardi noted that the income is used for the long-term management of the huge network of services connected to the Holy See and other institutions, both in Rome and in other parts of the world.
“How successful that strategy will be may depend on exactly what the books contain”, he said, adding that the Vatican had in any case “all but guaranteed these arrests will be a media sensation”.
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Chaouqui’s appointment to the economic commission, which was handpicked by the pope, caused no little embarrassment in 2013 when it emerged she had been highly critical of the Vatican on Twitter.
