![]() ![]() The Vatican’s gendarmes arrested two members of Pope Francis’s economic-reform committee-Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, a powerful monsignor, and Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, whose background is in public relations-for allegedly leaking documents to two Italian journalists. It has been an unusually turbulent week in Rome. Please remember, Crux is a for-profit organization, so contributions are not tax-deductible.Two new books show Pope Francis vigorously pushing the Vatican bureaucracy to clean house. You can help Crux by giving a small amount monthly, or with a onetime gift. ![]() That kind of reporting doesn’t come cheap, and we need your support. However, citing freedom of the press, the court acquitted both journalists in July 2016.Ĭrux is dedicated to smart, wired and independent reporting on the Vatican and worldwide Catholic Church. Publication of two books focused on financial irregularities - Nuzzi’s Merchants in the Temple and Emiliano Fittipaldi’s Avarice - led to both writers being charged by a Vatican court of “soliciting and exercising pressure” on a Vatican employee in order to obtain confidential documents. The Vatican amended its laws to making leaking “news and documents” a crime in the wake of the first so-called “VatiLeaks” trial in 2012 when Pope Benedict XVI’s butler was charged with “aggravated theft” for giving Vatican documents and papal correspondence to Nuzzi. A few weeks later, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who was then an official of the Vatican Secretariat of State, responded, saying that if the Vatican were to earmark, for example, 60 percent of the funds to charity “we would have to immediately fire 400 people” out of the current 4,000 Vatican employees. He had made similar claims in his book, Merchants in the Temple, published in December 2015. Nuzzi claims in his book that an estimated 58 percent of the donations to the Peter’s Pence collection were used “not for works of charity, but to fill in the (financial) gaps of the (Roman) Curia.” The Vatican has two special sources of income to which Catholics contribute: the Peter’s Pence collection, which is used by the pope for charity and emergency assistance and the contributions dioceses around the world make to support the work of the Vatican. The book also states that due to the sexual abuse crisis, donations sent to the Vatican have dropped to $56.9 million, compared to $112.7 million in 2006. “The supervisory instruments put in place by Pope Benedict XVI and strengthened by Pope Francis are making it possible to put in order the management of this patrimony to balance expenditures and income and, where necessary, to correct practices with respect to the responsibilities of the administrative bodies of the Holy See,” he said. Whether in surplus or deficit, he added, APSA’s balance sheet “is not the result of stealing, cunning and misguided management.” “At a certain point, one must look at what is spent, what is brought in and try to rebalance the expenses.” “The current (financial) situation of the Holy See is no different than that of any family or even states in different continents,” he said. RELATED: Facing fresh charges of financial scandal, all the pope’s men strike back ![]() 22 with Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, Bishop Galantino said the allegations of mismanagement and claims that the Vatican is on the brink of financial collapse are “not true.” However, Bishop Nunzio Galantino, president of APSA, dismissed Nuzzi’s claims, saying that while they make for a good book launch, the accusations are hardly an accurate description of “an articulated and complex reality like the church.” ![]()
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