Vatican Finances: Pope Francis Has Destroyed Without Being Able to Rebuild
He asks whether Pope Francis' much-publicised efforts to save the Holy See's finances have been enough, and replies: "Perhaps not, it appears."
At the beginning of April, the annual report of the Holy See's anti-money laundering agency, the Authority for Financial Supervision and Information (ASIF, formerly AIF), was published.
The AIF was respected internationally, writes Gagliarducci. It had introduced the Vatican's anti-money laundering law. International cooperation was growing.
The reports of MONEYVAL, the Council of Europe committee that assesses compliance with global standards, were all positive.
Then the AIF was hit by sudden searches and unclear legal contours as part of the investigation into the management of the Secretariat of State's funds.
However, the AIF's documents belong to the States with which information is exchanged. They cannot be searched or used in court.
The respectable top management of the AIF was decapitated. A new management was installed. New statutes changed the separation between the chairman of the board and the director. Now there is even a director who is also vice-president.
The last MONEYVAL report was therefore mixed. The financial law had to be adapted. The search of the AIF offices led to the suspension of the Vatican from Egmont, the international information exchange circuit. The suspension was lifted only after an agreement between the AIF and the Vatican's Promoter of Justice.
Under Pope Francis, the "new guard" wanted to change everything so that power would remain in the hands of a few, writes Gagliarducci.
He believes that the alleged $1.4 billion deficit of the Vatican's pension fund is an "unreal figure", given that the IOR has only $4.4 billion in assets and that the fund was fed by huge money influx from Paul VI and John Paul II.
It is also made up of contributions from workers. Even Cardinal George Pell, then head of the Secretariat for the Economy, said that the pensions would be secure for at least two generations.
Gagliarducci admits that the Vatican pension fund is struggling with an ageing population. Nor can he explain why the fund has never presented a balance sheet.
All in all, he concludes that the new guard that Pope Francis wants has not acted. The old guard left the IOR in 2013 with a profit of 86.6 million, a feat that has never been repeated.
In the end, Francis' "outgoing Church" has dismantled its institutions but does not know how to build new ones.
Familism, conflicts of interest, inconsistencies and centres of power have not been dismantled. They have only been moved elsewhere.
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