Pope Francis presses ahead with tackling the Vatican's murky finances

Cardinal Pell: financial enforcerONE area where Francis has managed to make progress is in cleaning up the Vatican's largely secret financial machinery. Most of the accounts at the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), or Vatican bank, that belong to people not directly associated with the church have been closed. The Vatican has invited scrutiny by Moneyval, an international financial watchdog. It has acquired an auditor-general. And by the end of last year the Holy See's regulatory body, the Financial Information Authority (AIF), had found 23 cases of suspected financial hanky-panky and sent them to the Promoter of Justice, the Vatican's prosecutor.Until last year none had led to a prosecution. But according to the Promoter of Justice's annual report, submitted last month, the first two cases went to court in 2016. According to a Vatican source (Vatican justice is not exactly transparent), one of the trials concerns the renovation of a penthouse apartment for Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, formerly the Vatican's most senior official. Two defendants, not including the cardinal, are charged with using the project to...Continue reading
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