The College of Cardinals elected Pope Francis with a mandate to reform the administration of the Holy See. They wanted an end to the “Vatileaks” that had troubled the previous pontificate and tighter control over Vatican administrators. They also wanted the new pope to advance the reforms that Pope Benedict—not a strong administrator, as he himself would acknowledge—had begun in two crucial areas: the Vatican’s financial affairs and the handling of sexual-abuse complaints.
Benedict XVI had commissioned three senior cardinals to investigate the Vatileaks scandal, and their report on the problems within the Roman Curia was the subject of intense speculation before the papal conclave. Did it confirm the influence of a “gay lobby” within the Vatican? Or the existence of a cabal that was obstructing Benedict’s reforms? Or financial misconduct that powerful prelates were eager to keep secret? Was the report discouraging enough to convince the aging pope that he did not have the stamina to attack the problems? All those theories were raised and discussed in the wake of Benedict’s resignation. Oddly, the subject was dropped entirely from public discussions after Francis was elected.
It was Benedict who began the difficult but necessary financial reforms, installing a new management team at the troubled Vatican bank, formally known as the Institute for Religious Works, and establishing the Financial Information Authority to supervise all Vatican transactions. Against intense resistance from the Vatican bureaucracy, he allowed the Council of Europe’s anti-money-laundering agency to scrutinize the Holy See’s financial dealings—a decision that John Allen, the leading American Vatican-watcher, praised as “[p]erhaps the single most important” financial reform of his pontificate.
It was on the issue of sexual abuse, however, that Benedict made the most determined strides. Dissatisfied with the disciplinary actions taken (or in many cases, not taken) by various Vatican offices, he had succeeded during the last years of the reign of John Paul II in getting the responsibility for dealing with priests accused of sexual abuse moved to his own office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In a memorable statement before the conclave that elected him pope, Cardinal Ratzinger lamented how the face of the Church had been disfigured by the “filth” of clerical misconduct.
After his election, Benedict escalated his campaign against abusive clerics. He instructed his subordinates that he should never be photographed alongside the influential founder of the Legion of Christ, Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, who had been accused of molesting his seminarians, and ordered a high-level investigation into the complaints that had been brushed aside for years by the Mexican priest’s powerful friends in the Roman Curia. As the damaging evidence mounted, Maciel was removed as head of the Legion, and in 2006 he was sentenced to spend the remainder of his life in “prayer and penance.” Benedict then ordered an investigation of the religious order that Maciel had founded, to determine how much its integrity had been corrupted by the founder’s double life.
The Maciel case was only one of hundreds that were adjudicated by the Vatican during the pontificate of Benedict XVI. It is true that complaints of clerical misconduct continued to pour into the Vatican as the scandal that had erupted in the United States in 2002 now hit Europe. But the vast majority of those complaints involved incidents that had taken place long ago. And as the cases percolated through the Vatican’s system of justice, Benedict was unflagging in his determination to purge the “filth” from the priesthood. In 2011 and 2012 alone, he laicized (in journalistic parlance, “defrocked”) nearly four hundred priests.
Reforms Derailed
The need for reform at the Vatican—for a more responsive bureaucracy, for financial transparency, and for effective discipline of clerical misconduct—did not pit liberals against conservatives. Benedict, apparently concluding that he no longer had the strength to lead a major reform, stepped down to clear the way for someone more energetic. Francis assumed the papacy with this problem foremost in his mind, and to this day he is generally regarded as a reformer.
Unfortunately, more than four years into his pontificate, Francis has failed to advance the cause of reform. On the contrary, after a promising start, he has derailed reforms that were begun under Benedict and even reforms that he initiated himself. His disdain for organization and his penchant for quick decisions have provoked several reversals of policy and heightened confusion within the Roman Curia.
Most importantly, Francis has aborted the two most critical reforms. He established the Secretariat for the Economy, giving it broad powers, and then rescinded those powers, leaving it unable to bring the desired transparency to the Vatican’s finances. He set up a special panel to advise the universal Church on the handling of sexual abuse, but that panel’s recommendations have not been implemented, and frustrated members have resigned—disclosing as they did so that for three years after he established the panel, the pope never met with its members. Francis himself has overlooked the failure of some of his own favorite bishops to confront abusive clerics. His dramatic reform initiatives now appear to be empty gestures, and the unhealthy clerical attitudes that Francis himself has decried so energetically have been reinforced.
The “Diseases” of the Roman Curia
Consider first the reform of the Roman Curia: the “big-ticket item” in the new pope’s mandate. For more than a year after his election, Francis burnished his reputation as a crusading reformer, most notably with a stunning philippic against the failings of Vatican bureaucrats.
The pope’s annual address to the Roman Curia, delivered sometime before Christmas, is usually understood as an exchange of holiday greetings and an occasion for the pontiff to share his top priorities with his closest associates. In 2005, for example, Benedict XVI used the occasion to give his famous talk against “the hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” in the interpretation of Vatican II, a message that became a major theme of his pontificate.
In December 2014, Francis delivered a searing critique of the “sicknesses” within the Curia, jolting Vatican-watchers (not to mention the Curia) and eliminating any possible confusion about his pastoral priorities. Reform of the Roman Curia would be his number one goal—for 2015 and probably for his entire pontificate.
The previous year’s address had included a comparatively mild warning against gossip and intrigue. This time he returned to that topic but left subtlety aside as he tore into the familiar vices of bureaucracies: an inward-looking and self-important approach, careerism, pettifoggery, factionalism, and lack of a sense of humor. He spoke about the “existential schizophrenia” of Vatican officials who may be leading “a hidden, often dissolute life.” And he made it abundantly clear that he was not speaking in purely abstract terms—that he believed all these failings could be found within the corridors of the Vatican.
At the end of his address the pope gave a nod to the faithful servants of the Church, mentioning that clerics, like airplanes, “only make the news when they crash.” But that quick word of praise came too late to soften the overall message. Photos of the meeting show a room full of long-faced prelates. Reports indicate that the pope received only sparse, tepid applause. The mood of the pre-Christmas meeting was anything but joyous.
“I have to say, I didn’t feel great walking out of that room today,” one Vatican official told John Allen, who remarked that the pope’s confrontational approach might be a risky one. He may want to change the way the Vatican works, but he cannot afford to alienate his entire staff or destroy morale. He needs someone to help him carry out his plans—even his plans for reform of the Roman Curia.
Francis’s willingness to risk the anger of his staff, returning to the topic of the previous year’s gentle rebuke and escalating his rhetoric so dramatically, suggested that the iron had entered his soul: that he had encountered resistance and was determined to overcome it.
New Offices with Unclear Powers
Just a few days before that stunning Christmas address, Jean-Marie Guénois had presciently reported in Le Figaro (in an article headlined “Secret War at the Vatican: How Pope Francis Is Shaking Up the Church”) on a struggle between a pope determined to change the way the Vatican does business and entrenched officials equally determined to resist the changes. In a sense the Holy Father was addressing not only the Vatican staff but the Church at large, explaining to everyone why it was so important to reform the Roman Curia.
To assist him in that crusade, Francis created a new Council of Cardinals, composed of nine prelates from around the world, to study the existing structures of the Vatican and examine proposals for reform. At this writing, more than four years into the pontificate, the Council of Cardinals has met nineteen times, usually sitting in three-day sessions, poring over countless reports and recommendations, yet the actual changes in the Vatican’s organizational chart have been minimal.
Francis has established two new bodies—the Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life and the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development—but neither was originally proposed by the Council of Cardinals. They developed instead from the suggestions of several cardinals in the general congregations before the conclave of 2013 and were formed by merging the duties and staffs of existing pontifical councils and commissions. Notice that both offices are designated as “dicasteries”—the blanket term for any office of the Holy See. They have no clear position in the Vatican’s organizational chart, their responsibilities have not been fixed, and their staffs have not been fully integrated.
In the business world, multinational corporations can merge, shed divisions, and restructure their operations overnight. At the Vatican, four years of crusading zeal have produced only a few tentative changes, with no fundamental shift in the way business is conducted. There has been no suggestion of change in the overall structure of the Roman Curia, in which the Secretariat of State is preeminent.
Contrary to what American Catholics might assume, the Vatican Secretariat of State is not the equivalent of the U.S. State Department. It is a super-department, wielding considerable influence over all the other Vatican dicasteries except the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Secretariat of State has two main divisions: one dealing with diplomacy, the other with internal Church affairs. The latter handles the day-to-day paperwork of the Curia. So the routine administration of the Vatican is conducted by the same office that handles relations with foreign governments.
The secretary of state is the most powerful man at the Vatican after the pope, outranking the prefects of congregations and presidents of pontifical councils. He sets the agenda for Vatican diplomacy while simultaneously controlling the flow of internal paperwork and managing the Vatican’s public-relations machinery. All the important business of the Vatican flows through his office. This odd organizational structure has two important drawbacks.
First, the concentration of power in one office discourages teamwork and creativity among the other leaders of the Roman Curia and restricts the flow of information to the supreme pontiff. The pope, not his secretary of state, should make crucial policy decisions. And like any other policy maker, he could benefit from broad consultation with officials who have direct knowledge of their own fields. In the 2013 general congregations, several cardinals suggested a new office, the Moderator of the Curia—a papal chief of staff coordinating the direction of all other agencies. That proposal appears never to have gained traction with the Council of Cardinals.
Second, the combination of diplomacy and internal affairs produces an unhealthy atmosphere for the administration of the Holy See. Because clerics trained in the arts of diplomacy are the ones most likely to be influenced by worldly concerns, they should be separated from the internal administration of the Church. Vatican diplomats should understand that their job is to represent the Church to the world, not vice versa.
The Communications Revolution
The consolidation of the Vatican’s media operations represents another effort at reform. In 2014 the pope formed an expert commission to study the communications needs of the Holy See and offer suggestions. According to the Vatican press office, when the Council of Cardinals reviewed the first commission’s report, it “proposed to His Holiness the institution of a commission to study this final report and to suggest feasible approaches to its implementation.” That announcement raised more questions than it answered. Did the first commission not offer plans for implementing its recommendations? If the ultimate goal of a reform of the Vatican’s media operations is to encourage candor and clarity, it’s obvious that the reforms haven’t taken effect yet.
Yet there was a more important reason for concern about the announcement of the second panel. The original commission was composed of recognized experts from around the world in the fields of media and communications. The new commission was made up of clerics working in the Vatican’s media operations and one executive of the newspaper owned by the Italian bishops’ conference. In other words, after the Vatican had recognized the need for a thorough overhaul of its outdated, uncoordinated, and ineffective media operations, the task of implementing those proposals was assigned to a group of insiders from those same outdated, uncoordinated, and ineffective operations.
Nevertheless, efforts at reform continued, eventually producing the new Secretariat for Communications. But that new secretariat faced enormous challenges. Msgr. Dario Vigano, appointed to head the secretariat, reported in 2015 that it would take at least three years to bring all the scattered offices together into a single coordinated unit. In an unusually candid address to the staff of the secretariat in May 2017, Francis admitted that the consolidation of the many offices involved in the project would require “a little violence.” It will be “good violence,” the pope hastened to assure his audience, insofar as it responds to the needs of the Church in a new era of public communications.
Bringing the Vatican’s communications strategy into the age of the Internet and social media was simple in comparison with the challenge of getting Vatican officials to appreciate the field of public relations. The Vatican offices involved in public communications included the newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican television center, the press office, Vatican Radio, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, and a half-dozen other offices—all operating independently, without any central strategy. Each had its own staff, its own proud history, its own interests to protect. Chris Patten, the British politician who chaired the first expert commission studying the problem, did not have to be a prophet to predict that there would be entrenched opposition to the proposed reforms.
Apart from the inevitable turf battles, the reform effort confronted knotty questions of budget and personnel. In both of those categories, the dominant concern was Vatican Radio, an enormously expensive operation with a staff of three hundred. Its employees are generally good at what they do, but what they do—what they have done, anyway—is produce radio programs. In the Vatican’s new strategy for the digital age, radio broadcasts were to play a much reduced role.
But even if all the resistance could be overcome and all the turf battles settled, even if the Vatican Radio staff could adapt happily to new responsibilities and the money could be found to pay them all, the process of reform would be only beginning. The real obstacles to effective communications at the Vatican do not, and will not, lie within the reorganized Secretariat for Communications. The effort is hampered by the policies and habits of other Vatican offices on which the secretariat must rely.
Charles Collins pinpointed one of the most revealing difficulties in his analysis for the Catholic news service Crux:
Sometimes a papal speech can be translated independently, in whole or in part, 3 or 4 times by different offices. Yet a central translation office hasn’t been established, and it would require coordination between the new communications office, the powerful Secretariat of State, and the Pontifical Household, which controls the pope’s schedule.
Control of the papal schedule was another vexed question. Before he retired from his position as director of the Vatican press office, Father Federico Lombardi admitted that he often did not know where the pope was or what he was doing. If the pope’s chief spokesman doesn’t know what the pontiff is doing, how can he be expected to answer the media’s questions?
But often it’s when the pope himself speaks that the communications problems really begin. Collins explains that “whenever the Pope speaks off the cuff—or says something controversial—the Secretariat of State tells everyone in the Vatican to wait, until the ‘official version’ comes out, no matter that the ‘unofficial,’ but authentic, version is all over television and the newswires.” This problem is compounded, of course, when the pope sets aside a prepared text and speaks extemporaneously, as Francis frequently does. Reporters hear his words immediately, but hours might pass before the press office has the “official” version, vetted by the Secretariat of State—and that version might not match the statement that by now has been broadcast all over the world.
And why is the Secretariat of State involved in this process at all? Again, the secretary of state outranks everyone at the Vatican except the pope himself. Certainly Cardinal Parolin outranks Msgr. Vigano (who is, Collins notes, “the highest-ranking Vatican official to not be a bishop”). The Secretariat of State supervises every other office of the Roman Curia, and that includes the Secretariat for Communications. At any moment, then, the strategies devised by the media experts at the Secretariat for Communications can be thwarted by officials at the Secretariat of State, who are definitely not media experts.
The Vatileaks Scandal—Repeated
During the pontificate of Benedict XVI, one of the toughest public relations problems facing the Vatican was the leakage of confidential documents, and the problem has continued under Francis, exposing infighting and inefficiency—if not outright dishonesty—within the offices of the Holy See. The first Vatileaks trial, under Benedict, resulted in the conviction of his valet and left lingering suspicions of a broader conspiracy. The second scandal, dubbed “Vatileaks II,” confirmed the impression that the Vatican staff was troubled by backbiting rivalries, insider deals, and flagrant misuse of the funds confided to the use of the Holy See.
The Vatileaks II scandal broke in 2015 when the Italian journalists Emiliano Fittipaldi and Gianluigi Nuzzi published books based on confidential documents obtained from sources inside the Vatican that exposed clear abuses of trust. For instance, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints—the office that investigates candidates for beatification and canonization—had no effective controls on spending. The Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), the office that administers the Vatican’s extensive real estate holdings, regularly engaged contractors without soliciting competitive bids and offered special rates to favored tenants. Few of these complaints were surprising to anyone who had covered the Vatican. But the specific evidence proffered by the two journalists, drawn from confidential documents, was evidence of another problem.
The leaks were traced, strangely enough, to a committee formed by Francis to study the Vatican’s financial affairs. In November 2015 a Vatican prosecutor brought criminal charges against three Vatican staffers—Msgr. Lucio Ángel Vallejo Balda, Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, and Nicola Maio—for leaking the internal documents. The journalists Fittipaldi and Nuzzi were also charged with “soliciting and exercising pressure” on the Vatican staff to furnish the documents.
The trial, before a Vatican tribunal, provided even more tabloid fodder than the stolen documents did. Msgr. Vallejo Balda testified that Chaouqui had seduced him and then threatened to tell all if he did not release the documents. The flamboyant Chaouqui—whose presence on the financial panel was difficult to explain, since she was a publicist rather than an expert in finance—generated headlines by alternately protesting her innocence and claiming to have more damaging secrets about the Vatican’s finances. It emerged during the trial that her husband, Corrado Lanino, controlled the computer on which the stolen documents had been stored. In yet another strange twist, that computer was kept in the barracks of the Swiss Guard rather than in the office of the financial commission, apparently because of fears that the latter was not physically secure.
In July 2016, the Vatican tribunal announced its verdicts.
Msgr. Vallejo Balda, the former secretary of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, was convicted of leaking confidential documents to reporters. The court sentenced him to eighteen months in prison. (In December he would be granted a papal pardon and released.)
Francesca Chaouqui, who had been described by prosecutors as the instigator of the leaks, was found guilty of conspiracy. But because the court found no conclusive evidence that she had actually given documents to reporters, she received only a ten-month sentence—to be suspended for five years. Thus Chaouqui, who had recently given birth to a son, avoided prison time.
Nicola Maio, who had been an assistant to Msgr. Vallejo Balda, was found innocent of involvement in the conspiracy.
Nuzzi and Fittipaldi, the journalists who published books based on the leaked documents, were acquitted on the grounds that since they were Italian citizens acting outside the Vatican, the court did not have jurisdiction over them.
Early in 2017, Chaouqui released her own book on the Vatileaks II affair. To no one’s surprise, her account was self-serving and offered little new information, merely rehashing old stories about financial mismanagement. What was puzzling, however, was her evident determination to make the Australian Cardinal George Pell the villain of the story. Now the prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, about which more will be said below, Cardinal Pell had become the Vatican’s financial accountability czar only after the excesses that Chaouqui had recounted, and his role was to curtail the financial misadventures. So why would Chaouqui point her finger at him?
The Resistance of the Old Guard
In Morris West’s novel Shoes of the Fisherman, an old Vatican hand gives this advice to a newly elected pope from a country far away from Rome: “Don’t try to change the Romans, Holiness. Don’t try to fight or convert them. They’ve been managing Popes for the last nineteen hundred years and they’ll break your neck before you bend theirs.”
Financial misconduct was only one aspect of the trouble within the Roman Curia. In their discussions leading up to the conclave of 2013, the cardinals voiced their dissatisfaction with the general culture within the Vatican bureaucracy: a dysfunctional combination of secrecy, careerism, intramural rivalries, and office politicking. Two years later, fresh leaks of confidential documents had shown that that culture persisted.
It made sense to address the Vatican’s chaotic financial system first, because money is always the lifeblood of any corrupt system. The new Secretariat for the Economy, led by the imposing Cardinal Pell, was designed to make all Vatican officials accountable for their spending. But not everyone was happy with the financial reforms; Cardinal Pell ruffled feathers. So it was no surprise that when the Vatileaks II scandal broke, Andrea Tornielli, one of the best-informed Vatican journalists, had identified Pell as the target of the latest gossip.
Again, the juiciest tidbits in the new “scandal” involve incidents that occurred before Pell’s appointment—incidents that were, in fact, among the main reasons for his appointment. Yes, one new book reported heavy spending in the Secretariat for the Economy. But this was an entirely new office, with broad responsibilities, needing office equipment and a full staff, including some employees with expertise in accounting and financial affairs; it was never going to be an inexpensive proposition. Perhaps more to the point, the people primarily responsible for the leaks—Vallejo Balda and Chaouqui—had evidently expected to play major roles in the new financial structures, and the leaks began after their hopes for advancement were disappointed.
Some reports have suggested that Vatileaks II demonstrated the resistance of the “old guard” to the reforming spirit of Francis. That is at best an oversimplification. The two persons who were found guilty of the leaks had been appointed by Francis himself to a commission that was intended to propose financial reforms. Vallejo Balda and Chaouqui could not simply be characterized as enemies of Francis or of economic reforms. Furthermore, there is at least some evidence that the same persons may have been involved in Vatileaks I, long before Francis arrived on the scene.
An interesting insight into Vatileaks II comes from the Vatican journalist Andrea Gagliarducci, who believes that the scandal involved a different sort of power struggle within the Curia. For years, powerful men inside the Vatican exchanged small favors with their Italian secular counterparts, Gagliarducci explains. Some of those favors involved financial transactions—the use of the Vatican bank for personal accounts, perhaps, or real estate transfers on friendly terms. Most of these little deals were harmless, but some were technically illegal, and some may have involved shady characters.
For Italian financiers, unsupervised transactions through the Vatican became more attractive after 9/11, when European banking authorities began imposing strict new regulations on Italy’s banks to counteract money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Some Vatican officials—Gagliarducci refers to them as the “men of compromise”—remained willing to help out their friends, and their influence grew as the health of John Paul II deteriorated. Things came to a head when Italian banking officials began to cut ties with Vatican institutions, citing the risk of unaccountable transactions. Pope Benedict XVI responded by beginning a process of financial reform. Gagliarducci writes: “To cut a long story short, under Benedict XVI, the ‘men of compromise’ who played games across the Vatican-Italian financial border, lost influence.”
The financial reforms that began under Benedict XVI accelerated under Francis. The prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, Cardinal Pell, steadily increased the pressure to make all Vatican financial dealings transparent. These changes were not welcomed by the “men of compromise,” who sought to undermine the reforms in general and Pell in particular.
Seen in this light, the leaks could be recognized as an attempt to embarrass the Holy See, to put public pressure on the new secretariat, and to make the reforms look wrongheaded. It was significant, then, that the latest leaks revealed questionable dealings before the reforms took effect. The goal of the leakers was not to expose wrongdoing and thereby clear the way for reform; the problems had already been identified and the solutions were being implemented. The goal, instead, was to create an impression of chaos. “In the end,” Gagliarducci wrote, “the leaks seem to be the latest attempt to cast shadows on the Vatican in order to thwart Vatican reforms and exert influence over Vatican projects.”
Uncontrolled Spending, Uncoordinated Budgets
To appreciate the importance of the economic reforms, one must understand that until the Secretariat for the Economy began imposing new rules, Vatican dicasteries followed no standard accounting procedures. Each office made its own spending decisions with little or no oversight. So the new Secretariat for the Economy was not merely tweaking the existing rules; it was imposing rules where none previously existed.
Francis signaled his intent to bring reform to the management of the Roman Curia when he put Cardinal Pell in charge of the secretariat. The former archbishop of Sydney was, in his youth, a star in Australian rules football, and he has never lost his combative spirit. Of all the members of the College of Cardinals, he may be the one least likely to worry about stepping on toes or about stating his blunt disagreement with any other prelate—including the pope himself.
In theory, every official of the Roman Curia serves at the pleasure of the Holy Father and has no authority except as a representative of the pope’s will. In practice, however, generations of Vatican officials have been able to build up their own fiefdoms within the bureaucracy. Americans, accustomed to the notion that any official should be held accountable for his actions and decisions, often find it difficult to fathom that the Vatican operates on a much older, more personalized European system. Just as kings allowed noblemen wide latitude for conducting affairs within their own estates, pontiffs gave curial cardinals discretion over their offices. It was considered unseemly to ask a nobleman, or a cardinal of the holy Church, to justify his decisions—much less to account for his spending.
In the past this system of Vatican governance bred gross corruption: nepotism, influence-peddling, and simony. In the modern era such blatant scandals have been rare. But the potential for corruption of a subtler sort is enormous. Vatican officials routinely do favors for friends. There are lavish dinners, no-bid contracts, and expensive trips abroad. In extreme cases, this approach can give rise to the appearance, at least, of serious improprieties.
In other cases, the potential for corruption takes the form of patronage. Money—spending power—animates any bureaucracy. Officials can use discretionary spending to pursue their own ends as well as those of the institution. A powerful curial cardinal can cultivate a base of support among the bishops and religious orders that he favors.
The power to spend money is not the only source of temptation. The opportunity to receive favors or funds—gifts from wealthy individuals or institutions—can also sway a prelate’s judgment. It might be too much to suggest that Vatican cardinals are venal enough to accept bribes, but some free-will gifts are unquestionably more innocent than others. Father Maciel survived for years at the helm of the Legion of Christ as investigations into his misconduct were stymied by prelates who had benefitted from his legendary fundraising.
Transparency is the enemy of corruption, real or imagined. So by imposing standard accounting procedures on every Vatican office, the Secretariat for the Economy was hoping to bring the Roman Curia into an era of accountability.
By 2015, as Cardinal Pell began his campaign for transparency, the Vatican bank was only beginning to emerge from months of turmoil prompted by complaints that the institution was providing opportunities for money laundering. The bank’s obvious vulnerability—due to a lack of clear financial standards—was enough to worry Italian regulators.
“Monsignor €500”
In 2014 a financial scandal opened on another front when Msgr. Nunzio Scarano, the former director of accounting for APSA who had been suspended during a money laundering investigation, was arrested on additional money laundering charges involving an alleged plot to bring twenty million euros in cash into Italy illegally. As the case developed, prosecutors said that Scarano had offered financial services for wealthy friends: “totally private, illegal activity which was also aimed at serving outsiders.” He had also reportedly solicited funds for charity from unsuspecting donors and used those funds to purchase his own luxury condominium.
Police had already taken an interest in what they described as Scarano’s “enormous” financial assets. He had provoked suspicions by withdrawing €560,000 (more than $600,000) from his personal account at the Vatican bank and for asking friends to accept cash and repay him with funds that he could deposit in an Italian bank. Those transactions had triggered the initial investigation into possible violation of Italian money laundering regulations.
Scarano responded that his activities—including his special favors for wealthy clients—had all been approved by his Vatican superiors. “I never laundered dirty money, I never stole,” the accused cleric insisted in a letter to the Holy Father. “I tried to help someone who asked for help.” Scarano asserted that he had enough documentation to prove his innocence.
More dramatically, the monsignor charged that while working as an accountant in APSA, he had sought to curb financial misconduct by his own lay superiors in that office. His efforts were thwarted, he said, because certain cardinals were “blackmailed” and covered up the abuses.
Scarano said that he had brought the financial misconduct to the attention of Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, the archbishop of Krakow and former secretary to Pope John Paul II. He also said that he had contacted Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals and former secretary of state. Neither prelate helped him, he said.
These claims, while obviously self-serving, were not completely implausible. How could APSA officials have failed to notice Scarano’s outside activities or his lavish spending? Among friends he was known as “Monsignor €500” because of his habit of carrying wads of large-denomination bills. How could he have acquired that nickname without arousing suspicion among his colleagues at the Vatican? Before he was suspended, Scarano held a key office supervising Vatican financial accounts. If the head accountant in any corporation began showing signs of fabulous wealth, wouldn’t other executives start asking questions? A Forbes magazine report on his case made the obvious point: “Sure, it’s possible he was a rogue cleric. But Monsignor Scarano worked for two decades as a senior accountant at the Vatican, which has weathered some recent storms.” It is probably not true that his superiors approved of his extracurricular activities. But it does seem clear that either his superiors were terribly negligent or that he enjoyed some sort of protection.
The Audit Suspended
The opposition to Cardinal Pell’s program for financial reforms became evident in February 2015 when the world’s cardinals met in a consistory to discuss the plans. “Heated arguments” reportedly erupted after the Australian outlined his proposal for the work of the new office, and several influential cardinals immediately suggested measures to scale back the authority of the secretariat. The opposition turned nasty when the first Vatileaks II documents became public, obviously designed to embarrass Pell and damage his standing. But those leaks also put Francis in an awkward position. If he wavered now in his support for Pell, he might give the leakers reason to believe that his entire program of reform could be derailed.
By approving the statutes of the new office in March of that year with only a few minor modifications, the pope signaled his support for Pell. But even as the plans moved forward, some Vatican officials, speaking anonymously, were at pains to remind reporters that the pope had not given Pell everything that he wanted. The secretariat would not oversee the Vatican’s real estate holdings, for example, and there would be three auditors rather than one. But these were minor details in the context of the authority given to the secretariat. On balance the pope’s decision was a clear victory for Pell.
But that victory was called into question a year later when the Vatican suddenly announced that a thorough audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers—the first outside audit of Vatican finances in history—had been suspended. Significantly, the announcement came not from the Secretariat for the Economy but from the Secretariat of State. The audit had begun in December 2015 after a preliminary inquiry uncovered the serious undervaluation of assets, unsupervised spending, and an atmosphere of mismanagement and corruption. Pressing energetically for regular audits and uniform financial controls, Pell faced resistance from other offices of the Roman Curia, and with the suspension of the PricewaterhouseCoopers audit he appeared to suffer a serious setback.
There was at first no explanation for the decision to suspend the audit. For that matter there was not any official announcement of the decision, which came to light only when the National Catholic Register reported on a memorandum issued on June 10, 2016, to offices of the Roman Curia by the Secretariat of State. Even Pell, who was (at least theoretically) the Vatican’s top financial official, told the Register that he was “a bit surprised” by the decision. He expected the audit to “resume shortly,” he said, but he could not make that prediction with any degree of confidence, since he did not yet know why it had been suspended.
After the audit was blocked, the Secretariat of State offered a murky explanation, suggesting that certain clauses in the auditors’ contracts required further clarification and hinting that once these details were resolved, the audit could proceed. But the audit never did proceed.
By 2016 the Vatican bank was under entirely new management and well on its way to compliance with European banking regulations. Dozens of questionable accounts had been closed, new controls had been instituted, and its staff of lay professionals appeared fully committed to transparency. Unfortunately the offices of the Roman Curia were not ready to make the same commitment. Francis, who had supported the Secretariat for the Economy at first, now backed away. Visiting the offices of the new secretariat, he advised the staff to be discreet: “full accountability, yes; but let’s keep our problems in-house.”
The Secretariat of State now announced that an internal audit would move forward, while the services of PricewaterhouseCoopers “will also be available to those dicasteries that wish to avail themselves of its support and consulting services.” In other words, those being audited would determine how far the external auditors should delve into their records.
The Secretariat of State seems to have suspended the external audit out of fear of compromising the sovereignty of the Vatican city-state—the same fear that shaped its response to the sex-abuse scandal. For the past several years a capable American lawyer, Jeffrey Lena, had been fighting off lawsuits against the Holy See by sexual-abuse victims by invoking “sovereign immunity.” A sovereign state does not have to respond to private plaintiffs in a court of law. And a sovereign state—as the June 10 announcement reminded us—does not open its books to an external auditor.
But there was a price to be paid for sovereign immunity. Did the Holy See wish to be seen by the world primarily as a sovereign state or as a spiritual stronghold? While Francis spoke frequently about a “Church that is poor,” about reforming the Curia and dismantling its fiefdoms, and about his willingness to “make a mess,” would the institutional prerogatives of the Vatican bureaucracy take precedence over the Church’s evangelizing mission?
A Turf Battle between Financial Agencies
By a motu proprio (an executive order of the pope “on his own initiative”) later that year, the pope returned the responsibility for the Vatican’s financial assets to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See. The Secretariat for the Economy would exercise oversight: establishing procedures for financial transactions and ensuring that those procedures were followed. Francis explained that he wanted to separate administration from financial oversight. “It is of the utmost importance that bodies responsible for vigilance are separated from those that are being overseen,” he wrote. But the motu proprio put financial management back in the hands of the agency whose top accountant had been “Monsignor €500.” It was a major victory for the officials who argued that Cardinal Pell was asserting too much control in his bid to ensure financial accountability.
The turf battle between the Secretariat for the Economy and APSA would continue. APSA evidently decided to proceed with an audit on its own terms, effectively denying the supervisory role of the Secretariat for the Economy. Msgr. Mauro Rivella, the secretary of APSA, instructed dicasteries to provide data to PricewaterhouseCoopers, saying that the accounting firm was conducting an audit of Vatican finances. In May 2017, Pell complained that APSA had overstepped its authority, and he quickly wrote to all the same offices, telling them that APSA had “no authority, nor prerogative,” to issue such instructions. The cardinal’s letter—also signed by Libero Milone, the Vatican’s auditor general—told Vatican officials “with deep regret” that they should not comply with the APSA directive. Pell pointed out that the external audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers had been suspended more than a year earlier, and “there is no ongoing audit” by outside accountants.
The tensions between APSA and the Secretariat for the Economy had been aggravated, Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register reported, because APSA had not complied with requests for information from the secretariat. Pell remarked that the conflict had provoked a “moment of truth” for the cause of Vatican economic reform. The campaign for transparency had lost momentum, and in an atmosphere still marked by intramural battles and unassailable private fiefdoms, it seemed only a matter of time before some new financial scandal would emerge.
In yet another setback for the cause of financial reform, the Vatican’s auditor general, Libero Milone, resigned in June, just a few weeks after the struggle between APSA and the Secretariat for the Economy became public. The terse announcement of his departure, with no explanation offered, and the notice that a search for Milone’s replacement would begin “as soon as possible” suggested that his resignation was not planned in advance. Italian media reported that he had recently been offered a post as director of the Italian broadcasting network but had turned it down, saying that he wanted to focus on his responsibilities at the Vatican.
Several weeks after Milone’s departure, in September 2017, he disclosed to reporters that he had been forced to resign after he probed into evidence of financial misconduct by an important Vatican official, whom Milone, bound by a confidentiality agreement, declined to identify. The assistant secretary of state, Archbishop Giovanni Becciu, called this charge “false and unjustified,” yet the archbishop confirmed that he had given Milone a choice between resigning quietly and facing criminal charges for “spying on the private lives of his superior and staff.”
If Milone was “spying” on other Vatican officials, he may have had good reason to do so. Suspecting that his office had been bugged and its computers hacked, he brought in an outside contractor to investigate. When the contractor confirmed that a computer in the auditor’s office had been compromised, Milone instructed him to broaden his investigation and identify the culprit. In other words, having learned that he was under surveillance, he indulged in a bit of counter-surveillance.
Responding to Milone’s disclosures, an official Vatican statement charged that the auditor general had “illegally engaged an external company to conduct investigative activities on the private life of Holy See personnel.” The key word here is “illegally.” Had Milone exceeded his authority, violating the statutes that governed his role? A Reuters report offered an interesting observation:
It was not clear which statutes were said to have been violated. Article two of the statutes says the auditor-general has “full autonomy and independence,” including to “receive and investigate any reports on anomalous activities” of Vatican entities.
As I write, three months after Milone’s departure, the office of the auditor general remains unoccupied. In theory the auditor general would work under the prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy. But Cardinal Pell’s indefinite leave of absence to defend himself against sexual abuse charges in Australia leaves that office empty too. If no one at the highest levels of the Vatican feels an urgent need to fill these positions, even with temporary administrators, then the campaign for financial accountability seems to have been suspended.
Coping with the Sex-Abuse Scandal
Vatican insiders may see financial transparency as the key to more responsible stewardship within the Roman Curia, but from the outside, it appears that the most urgently needed reforms are those involving the handling of sexual abuse accusations.
The tightening of disciplinary procedures for clerics accused of sexual misconduct began with the American hierarchy in 2002 and accelerated through the pontificate of Benedict XVI. But two related problems remain unaddressed. First, the Vatican has not yet ensured that the same “zero-tolerance” policy will be in force, and that abuse complaints will be promptly addressed, in every ecclesiastical jurisdiction throughout the world. Some bishops have lagged in their responses to the crisis.
Second, and more important, the Vatican has not yet established an effective policy for dealing with bishops who neglect their responsibility to deal with predatory priests. As I explained in my book The Faithful Departed, the negligence of many Catholic bishops—and worse, their deliberate efforts to mislead the faithful by covering up evidence of abuse—was more damaging to the credibility of the Church than the abuse itself. The sexual abuse of young people is a crime and a terrible sin, but the Church has a long acquaintance with individuals’ sins. It was Church leaders’ siding with the predators at the expense of their victims and lying to protect the criminals that shook confidence in the entire institution. If bishops would lie about such things, how could they be trusted on other subjects? And if the bishops were not trustworthy, how could we know that we were receiving the true Faith, passed down from the apostles?
During Francis’s pontificate, the Vatican has been confronted by accusations of sexual abuse against two prominent prelates. Neither case has yet produced a clear result—although not through any lack of diligence on the part of the Vatican.
The first case involves Józef Wesołowski, a Polish archbishop and Vatican diplomat who in 2013 was accused of molesting boys while serving as the papal nuncio to the Dominican Republic. Recalled to the Vatican, Wesołowski was laicized in the first stage of canonical proceedings. Prosecutors in the Dominican Republic and Poland had expressed interest in bringing criminal charges against him, but the Holy See chose to continue its own proceedings with a criminal trial, reasoning that the former nuncio was immediately subject to Vatican law. The criminal trial was postponed, however, when Wesołowski—who was under house arrest at the Vatican—fell ill. He died in August 2015 before the trial could resume.
The second case is that of Archbishop Anthony Apuron of Agaña, in Guam. He too was accused of molesting boys and in June 2016 was relieved of his administrative duties and summoned to Rome. As complaints against Apuron multiplied, Archbishop Savio Hon Tai Fai, named temporary caretaker of the Church in Guam, announced that he had urged the Holy See to remove Apuron permanently from his post and appoint a successor. Taking a step in that direction in October, the Vatican named Michael Byrnes, an auxiliary bishop of Detroit, coadjutor archbishop of Agaña “with special faculties,” indicating that he would take over the administration of the Guam archdiocese immediately and succeed Apuron should the suspended archbishop be formally stripped of his office. Meanwhile a Vatican investigation of Apuron’s conduct was underway as of this writing.
In these two cases the Vatican demonstrated a stern resolve to discipline abusive bishops. Still the question remained: would the Holy See be equally firm in taking action against bishops who had not abused young people themselves but had been negligent in curbing abuse by priests under their jurisdiction?
Holding Bishops Accountable for Sex-Abuse Complaints
The pope’s own record is not impressive in this regard. In 2015 he promoted a Chilean prelate, Bishop Juan Barros, over loud protests that Barros had ignored complaints of abuse by a priest who was his friend. Angry Catholics demonstrated at the cathedral in Osorno, where Barros was to be installed, and a delegation of other Chilean bishops visited the Vatican to question the appointment. But Francis held firm, insisting that Barros was innocent of misconduct. He was caught on film saying that the Chilean Catholics were “stupid” to believe the complaints against Barros.
Later that year, the pontiff appointed his ally Cardinal Godfried Danneels to participate in the Synod of Bishops. There was no evident reason for the retired Belgian archbishop to be given such an active role. Indeed, there were compelling reasons for excluding him from a discussion of family life. Several years earlier Danneels had been the object of a Belgian police investigation into sexual abuse that culminated in a raid on archdiocesan offices and a search of the cardinal’s residence. No criminal charges were filed, but police had evidently suspected that the cardinal was concealing evidence of abuse. Indeed, Belgian newspapers published transcripts of a conversation, secretly recorded, in which the cardinal had urged a man to remain silent about the abuse he had suffered at the hands of another Belgian prelate. Confronted with that evidence, the cardinal’s office could only offer Danneel’s limp admission that “the whole approach…was not the right one.”
In 2014, Francis intervened in the case of Mauro Inzoli, an Italian priest who had been stripped of his clerical status by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) after he was found guilty of molesting adolescents. The pope, responding to pleas from a few of his close advisers, overruled that decision, though he was forced to reverse his own decision and laicize Inzoli after an Italian court found him guilty of multiple counts of sexual abuse.
So would Francis approve a policy that holds bishops accountable for their negligence? He seemed to answer that question in June 2015 with new disciplinary norms for bishops who fail to act on sexual abuse complaints. Recommended by a special papal commission headed by Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, endorsed by the Council of Cardinals, and conditionally approved by the pope for five years, the norms would subject such bishops to the jurisdiction of a new tribunal under the CDF. Francis also approved the allocation of “adequate resources” to staff the new tribunal, which would also assist the CDF in cases involving sexual abuse by other clerics, for which it was already responsible.
Then a curious thing happened—nothing. No tribunal was established, no staff was assigned, no office space was set aside. No steps whatsoever were taken to carry out the policy that Francis had approved.
A year passed quietly, and then at last Francis issued a new policy. As he had done with the Secretariat for the Economy—endowing it with sweeping powers that he later trimmed back because of internal resistance—the pope rescinded his approval of the new norms. In a motu proprio of June 2016, the pope declared that there was no need for a new tribunal to handle disciplinary cases against negligent bishops because the Code of Canon Law already provides adequate remedies. All that was needed, therefore, was a clarification that the existing procedures for disciplining bishops “for grave causes” may be applied to bishops who fail to curtail abuse of minors by clerics. In announcing this new policy, the pope did not even mention the old one. But the tribunal announced in June 2015 was clearly a dead letter in June 2016.
The new policy raised two obvious questions. First, if canon law already allowed for disciplinary action against bishops, why had a new tribunal been erected? Second, if the disciplinary mechanism had been in place all along, why had no bishops been punished? As Father Alexander Lucie-Smith, writing in London’s Catholic Herald, concluded, “So it can be done. What is needed is the will to do it.”
If that conclusion was somewhat cynical, Cardinal O’Malley unintentionally vindicated such cynicism when he remarked that the motu proprio conveyed “a sense of urgency and clarity that was not there before.” Really? Had it taken fifteen years of catastrophe to arouse a “sense of urgency” sufficient for a clarification of canonical guidelines? If Cardinal O’Malley intended to be reassuring, he failed miserably.
A Commission without Support
In February 2017, the Associated Press reported on the work of O’Malley’s commission. The news was discouraging. In a paragraph inexplicably buried at the bottom of the article, the story revealed that the commission’s work was ignored:
Francis scrapped the commission’s proposed tribunal for bishops who botch abuse cases following legal objections from the congregation. The commission’s other major initiative—a guideline template to help dioceses develop policies to fight abuse and safeguard children—is gathering dust. The Vatican never sent the template to bishops’ conferences, as the commission had sought, or even linked it to its main abuse-resource website.
This shocking report followed close on the heels of complaints, aired by two members of the papal commission, that the group had been overworked and underfunded and that meetings were not held regularly. But the AP report was far more damaging, showing that the commission had launched two important projects, and neither had been implemented.
It was appalling that negligent bishops still were not being held accountable, though any recommendation for disciplining bishops was bound to face stiff opposition. But now it came to light that the papal commission had not even managed to post its own recommendations on its own website.
A few weeks later Marie Collins, a member of the commission who was herself a victim of abuse, resigned, complaining that the group’s work had been thwarted from within the Roman Curia. A few days after her public announcement, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—which was the main target of Collins’s criticism—defended the CDF and denied any foot-dragging on the abuse issue. Collins quickly shot back, rebutting the cardinal’s arguments.
Bear in mind that Collins’s resignation was not a bolt from the blue. She had frequently shown signs of impatience. Nor was she the first member of the commission to leave. Peter Saunders—who, like Collins, is an abuse victim—had been asked to resign in 2016 after issuing a series of angry comments. Refusing, he was placed involuntarily on an indefinite “leave of absence.” Another member, Claudio Papale, resigned in September 2016 without any public explanation.
In her resignation announcement, Collins cited the scuttling of the tribunal for negligent bishops and the failure to implement worldwide guidelines as sources of frustration. But the “last straw,” she said, had been the CDF’s refusal to implement a recommendation from the commission that every abuse victim who contacts the Vatican receive a personal reply from Rome. Cardinal Müller’s entirely reasonable response was that personal contact with abuse victims should be the responsibility of local bishops, not officials in Rome. The CDF hears hundreds of abuse cases, originating in dioceses all around the world. It seems unrealistic to expect that the CDF become familiar with every person involved. An American who appeals his case to the Supreme Court expects a fair hearing but not a personal note from one of the justices.
In his response to other complaints, however, Müller was less compelling. He characterized the tribunal for bishops as a mere proposal rather than an established fact. Yet Vatican Radio had announced in June 2015, “Pope Francis has created a new Vatican tribunal section to hear cases of bishops who fail to protect children from sexually abusive priests,” and the Vatican press office had reported, “The Council of Cardinals agreed unanimously on these proposals and resolved that they be submitted to the Holy Father, Pope Francis, who approved the proposals and authorized the provision of sufficient resources for this purpose.”
But of course the tribunal had not been set up, and now, months later, Müller explained the odd sequence of events. After the pope had approved the tribunal, Vatican officials discussed the plan and concluded that the disciplinary task could be handled by the Congregation for Bishops (and the Congregation for the Eastern Churches for bishops of the Eastern rites, or the Congregation for Evangelization for those in mission territories). So Collins’s complaint was at least partially correct—the Roman Curia did block the implementation of the O’Malley commission’s plan.
Still Müller could justifiably argue that the fundamental goal of the papal commission—the establishment of a means to discipline negligent bishops—had been achieved. Evidently Francis was convinced that the approach recommended by the Roman Curia was superior to the approach he had approved a year earlier. It was odd, however, that the Curia had apparently discussed that approach only after the initial proposal had been approved. In another display of the chaotic administrative style that has characterized this pontificate, the O’Malley commission, the Council of Cardinals, and the pope had instituted an important new policy without having consulted the officials most closely involved.
In her answer to Müller, Marie Collins produced other evidence that the O’Malley commission was not working closely with other Vatican offices. She complained that CDF officials did not attend the commission’s meetings or respond to invitations for discussions. The picture that emerged was of a papal commission detached from the regular offices of the Vatican: a commission that could not persuade other Vatican officials to cooperate or even to post its recommendations on the Holy See’s website.
Marie Collins charged that the Roman Curia was not in sympathy with the papal commission, and in his response, Müller indirectly lent credence to that complaint by implying that the commission did not recognize the realities of the work at the Vatican. So was the commission being unreasonable, or was the CDF being intransigent? In an important sense it did not matter. One way or another, two important Vatican bodies were not cooperating. And the failure of anyone to make them cooperate by clear directives from above suggested that—rhetoric aside—ending the sex-abuse scandal still was not a top papal priority.
In September 2017, Francis finally met with the commission that he had established in 2014. He acknowledged that the Church had been “late” in responding to the problem of sexual abuse and that the commission had been forced to “swim against the tide.” The pope made the remarkable confession that he himself was “learning on the job”—learning, for example, to accept a “zero tolerance” policy fifteen years after the sexual abuse scandals had exploded. But while he encouraged the commission in its work and was pleased that some episcopal conferences had accepted the commission’s recommendations, the pope offered no new promises. Marie Collins responded to the pope’s remarks by saying, “Zero tolerance is the way to go, but it’s toothless if there isn’t a sanction for anyone who doesn’t operate it.”
Playing Favorites
Disturbing as it is that the campaign for reform has bogged down, it is still more disturbing that Francis has shown a pronounced tendency to exempt his own allies from such reforms as he has proposed, thereby rendering those reforms ineffectual. The Vatican has a long and unhappy history of allowing prelates to escape the consequences of their own missteps; any successful Vatican reform must begin with a determination to hold Church officials accountable. The high cost of playing favorites was illustrated by two damaging incidents that became public in the summer of 2017, just before this book went to press.
First, the Vatican indicted two former officials of the Bambino Gesù Hospital (which is owned and operated by the Holy See) on embezzlement charges. This indictment was the first such action brought by Vatican prosecutors under the new rules designed to promote transparency and accountability in financial transactions. The Vatican had been under pressure from European banking authorities to prosecute violations of these rules.
Giuseppe Profiti and Massimo Spina—the president and treasurer, respectively, of the Bambino Gesù Foundation—were charged with improperly spending more than four hundred thousand euros in foundation funds on the renovation of an apartment owned by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. Investigators unearthed a series of financial transactions that suggested a contractor was paid by two different Vatican offices for his work in a case that has given rise to the Vatican’s first indictments for financial misconduct. The contractor, Gianantonio Bandera—who was recommended for the job by Cardinal Bertone—eventually filed for bankruptcy and did not complete the renovations. Neither Bandera nor Cardinal Bertone was named as a defendant in the case.
The indictment came just a week after an Associated Press report uncovered evidence of serious mismanagement at the Bambino Gesù Hospital in the past: mismanagement that had compromised the quality of patients’ care. Vatican officials said that the report had been exaggerated and that the existing problems had been addressed by new hospital administrators.
In the second scandal, Vatican police broke up a drug-fueled homosexual orgy in the apartment of the private secretary to Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, the president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. It is not clear how the secretary, Msgr. Luigi Capozzi, had landed an apartment in a residence reserved for the highest-ranking Vatican officials. Apparently he had influential friends, and there were reports that he was in line for appointment as a bishop.
Capozzi had access to a car with Vatican license plates, another sign of influential friends, which made him virtually exempt from searches by the Italian police and could have facilitated the transportation of illegal drugs. The location of his residence—in a building with one door leading onto Vatican territory, the other onto the streets of Rome—was also ideal for someone avoiding police oversight. He finally pushed too far, however. Other residents of the building (presumably including some of those top Vatican officials) complained about a steady train of young male visitors and of noisy parties at Capozzi’s apartment. Those complaints prompted the police raid.
These two cases—one financial scandal, one sexual scandal—drew attention to the unfinished business of Vatican reform. Could Catholics be confident that the financial affairs of the Bambino Gesù Hospital were now in order? Or that no more powerful Vatican figures were being protected from prosecution? Did the unsavory career of Msgr. Capozzi signal the enduring power of a “gay lobby” within the Vatican? Effective Vatican reforms might have provided satisfactory answers to these questions.