Merchants in the Temple

The Revolution of Francis

On February 21 and 22, 2014, Francis celebrated his first Consistory, where he appointed nineteen cardinals. Meanwhile, during moments of reflection and prayer, he defined the final details of the reorganization of the state. Among the papers he brought with him into his room at Casa Santa Marta, there was a six-page document that the COSEA Commission had prepared and delivered on February 18. The title was “Proposed Coordination Structure for Economic-Administrative Functions,” and it contained a series of suggestions for revolutionizing the small state.

It was a tense and difficult moment. Earlier in the month, on February 3, Francis had also received the final report on COSEA’s works, with observations on the critical failures and major risks they had come across. The tone of the report was unsparing:

Final proposals to present to the Holy Father …

1. A lack of governance, control and professionalism lead to high risks at APSA. 92 recommendations for addressing those risks have been identified … COSEA proposes to involve the adequate juridical authorities wherever particular findings require this.

2. A concrete recommendation for each commercial activity and a proposal for the future organization of the Governorate have been prepared. The summary report will also include a qualitative analysis of the benefits and downsides which a tax on income and sales (VAT) in the Vatican State would bring about.1

On the morning of Sunday, February 23, St. Peter’s Square was filled with pilgrims. The cardinals who had gathered here less than one year earlier—at the Conclave that beneath Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel had elected an Argentine Jesuit as the next Pontiff—were back in Rome. Francis had carefully prepared the homily that he would read during the Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, where he would be facing the nineteen brother cardinals he had just appointed.

He spoke to them forcefully: “A Cardinal enters the Church of Rome, my brothers, not a royal court … May all of us avoid, and help others to avoid, habits and ways of acting typical of a court: intrigue, gossip, cliques, favoritism and partiality.” A brief pause, and then the successor of Peter repeated his exhortation for an end to the infighting: “May all of us avoid intrigues … May we love those who are hostile to us. We are required not only to avoid repaying others the evil they have done to us, but also to seek generously to do well by them.”

His message of peace was meant to ease tensions as well as to introduce the dramatic move he would be presenting the next day to the Council of 15 (C15), the body created by John Paul II to audit the Vatican’s finances. It was a touchy situation. Once the Consistory was over, the cardinals of the Council would stay behind in Rome to discuss the 2014 budgets that had been blocked by the auditors. The documents had just been revised, and the Pope in person had ordered the elimination of unnecessary outside consultants and imposed a hiring freeze to reduce personnel costs. If the cardinals did not approve the budget now, the Holy See’s activities could grind to a halt. While they were well aware of the situation, not everyone realized that a new super-dicastery was about to be created and that they themselves would be pushed aside. Bergoglio had prepared this new development along the lines indicated by both COSEA and the C8.

The confidential meeting of February 24 would go down in history and I was able to hear it documented in a digital recording. After decades of stalling, the most important reform of the Curia in many years was about to be announced by the Pope. The cardinals were sitting in the room, waiting to hear the news.

The Establishment of the Secretariat and Council for the Economy

Francis was the first to take the floor, making his big announcement immediately in his typically blunt and direct manner:

During the Consistory I decided to make this dicastery for finance, the Secretariat of the Economy, and today I left the establishing document with the Secretary of State. This morning I signed the motu proprio, I spoke with Cardinal Pell, whom you know, and I asked him if he would be the head of this dicastery. The head, I said … I don’t know if he will be a Secretary or President, the terminology has to be studied, it’s written down but I don’t remember it … I am aware that for him this is a deminutio capitis [reduction of power], because he is the head of a church. He is leaving that church to be a banker, which is a deminutio capitis, but he said without hesitation that he would do it. I thank him very much. I signed it with today’s date, in collaboration with the Secretariat of State and bearing in mind the unique nature of the administrative bodies. For example, the Governorate is not the same as the dicastery for the Causes of Saints, and Propaganda Fide also has a special nature because of the donations it receives … I wanted to say personally to the members of the Council of 15 that now there will no longer be 15 cardinals but rather 8 bishops and cardinals and 7 laypersons.

After the Holy Father’s statement the cardinals applauded, but Parolin silenced them with a gesture of his hand. A new dicastery, the Secretariat of the Economy, was being created and the Council of 15 was being suppressed. Or rather, it was being replaced by a twin body that would be called the Council for the Economy, on which seven of the fifteen participants would be qualified experts from the professional world who would serve not as simple consultants but as voting members, on equal footing with the religious members. Francis was now making concrete and clear to the Church hierarchy the rebalancing of religious and laypeople that had been studied for months by COSEA and the consultants of Promontory and McKinsey. This was a radical change: for the first time a group of lay officials was being allowed into the closed and inviolable world of Vatican finances.

Parolin slightly raised his right hand again, asked for everyone’s attention, and thanked the Pope:

Thank you, Holy Father for coming, thank you for the communication you have brought to us, and we are here to assure you of our collaboration.

And Francis:

Of that I am certain, I have seen how you have collaborated with COSEA and I am certain.

An Exceptional Secret Document

Here are excerpts from this groundbreaking meeting, transcribed from a digital recording to which I was given exclusive access. We are thus able to enter for the first time into the secret council of cardinals and get a better understanding of the financial issues afflicting the Church:

Parolin: Thank you, truly. The Holy Father has announced and offered his best wishes to Cardinal Pell. We join the Pope in congratulating him on this appointment, also if it means, as the Pope said, a diminutio. Nevertheless he accepted, in the spirit of service, the exercise of this new responsibility.

Question from a cardinal: Will the new dicastery be made public immediately?

Parolin: It is not public, the Pope has told me. I myself did not know about it … I imagine it will be made public in the next few days. Perhaps Cardinal Pell knows something more …

A cardinal’s joking remark in a low voice:… Of course … Pell knows everything … (laughter)

Pell: I think it will be made public maybe today or tomorrow. Seeing as the announcement has been made, like all of us I would say that it is already public … But the Holy Father told me the official announcement will be published today or tomorrow in the Osservatore and then we’ll move forward.

Parolin: Thank you. I think it will be tomorrow because it takes at least a day for all the procedures, but the Pope told me that he sent the Chirograph to the office today. It’ll take a minimum amount of time to process it, to send it up to the Secretariat of State and prepare the press release, etc.…

Wisecrack by a cardinal: Better today … otherwise Tornielli will tell all tonight [Andrea Tornielli is an Italian Vaticanologist who writes for the newspaper La Stampa].

Pell: Yes, it would definitely be better today. A press release has already been prepared, now we’re in a new world, there’s all the collaboration, but this press release has to be issued by the new dicastery …

Parolin: Fine, no problem. But I have to go out to make sure that everything is proceeding, because I imagine that it will be there waiting for me on my desk, perhaps, while you’re presenting the budget. Let me go have a look … seeing as there’s … this rush. I’m wondering if our meeting should continue …

Cardinals’ voices: No … No.

Parolin:… Or whether at this point we can consider our work concluded for now … That is what I wanted to ask. If you have some thoughts …

Pell: Thank you, Eminence, I don’t think there’s much point in continuing now, but I think we have to define the policies for at least the next two or three months. I would suggest that some regulations remain valid for now and we hope there will be a meeting of this new council, consisting of cardinals, bishops and laypersons before the summer, in June or July. This council has to be established and the Holy Father is ready to do it as quickly as possible. It think it would be advisable for things to remain as they are until then. I am open to suggestions.

The cardinals were disoriented and becoming more and more confused. If the Pope suppressed the Council, what would happen to the bedeviled budgets which, now that they had been revised, needed to be approved urgently? There was a risk that everything would be paralyzed. On the one hand, the new dicastery had upset the arrangements of all the other entities. On the other, the Council called upon to approve the 2014 budget was expiring and thus had no power or prerogatives. The economic and financial life of the Holy See had to go on: construction work needed to be approved, suppliers established, consultancies reconsidered. The cardinals didn’t know how to behave or even who was supposed to make the decisions.

The Clash Behind Closed Doors of Pell, Parolin, and the Cardinals of the Curia

The Council of 15 meeting was brought under control not by Parolin but by Pell, the ambitious bulldog from Sydney, who had arrived quietly in the Holy See in the spring of 2013 with the intention of playing an important role on Francis’s team. He had a large personality and authority. He didn’t trust anyone, tending instead to focus on every decision and responsibility himself. Today he was the leader of the assembly and for the moment, at least on paper, he was the new chief of Vatican finances, by the will of the successor of Peter.

Few would have bet on the brilliant career of this priest, who in his home country had survived accusations of covering up for pedophile priests, at least until April 2013, when Francis, indifferent to criticism of the man, appointed him as one of the eight cardinals to advise him on the direction of the Universal Church and the reform of the Roman Curia. Day after day, Pell prepared the change with the goal of taking command of the Curia. Hardly what you would call a diminutio! Everyone knows, also at the Vatican, that the person in charge is the one who holds the purse strings. Pell’s stature had risen. He had achieved his goal.

At the meeting of the Council of 15, the Prefect of the newborn Secretariat for the Economy, fresh off his appointment, now had to face down cardinals whose concerns and distrust were growing by the minute because of the changes just announced. There was a tense power play between the Australian Cardinal, the old guard—represented by the Head of the Prefecture, Versaldi, and the President of the Governorate, Bertello—and the new Secretary of State, Parolin. The cardinals were hoping to approve the budgets and finally close the book on this chapter. But Pell did more than resist. In what might have looked like a slight skirmish, and using that soft tone of voice practiced by some members of the Curia, “the ranger”—as Bergoglio often described him, in appreciation of his tenacity—reprimanded Parolin with a rap across the knuckles:

Versaldi: We have to be careful about taking steps, even if formally necessary, that might produce not so much a vacatio as a form of lawlessness … Each of us has to know if he still has the authority, the autonomy … For example, does the Prefecture still have autonomy to audit accounts? In the meantime … shall we continue?

Parolin: We have to see what the Chirograph says in this regard, we don’t know, so it is impossible to answer this question, but it seems logical to me that, until the new body starts its operations, things should continue as they do now. I deduce this based on the principles of logic …

Pell: The Chirograph will say that the world has changed. We obviously have to move forward through dialogue, gradually. There have been many discussions that have to continue, no one wants to do all this as some kind of revolution. But it would be a mistake to think we could go on exactly as before: the world has changed. The life of the Holy See must go on, and we are obviously seeking your collaboration, without which it is impossible to achieve the good of the Church. And this is what we all want, the good of the Church.

Parolin: There was Cardinal Cipriani, who wanted …

Background voice: But I wanted to ask you something … Free me from Calcagno, I would gladly go back to being a professor, as long as you don’t [kill] me, too …

Cipriani: The only doubt is whether our only reason for doing so is to avoid blocking this budget … if there is some way that Cardinal Pell thinks we could approve it for two or three months or something of that kind, why isn’t anything approved now? We have to go forward today. Otherwise what are they going to do tomorrow? I don’t know …

Pell: It seems to me, Eminence, that one thing must be clear: an approval ad interim for three months would be not only useful but necessary, because life must go on …

Versaldi: I would propose we have a look at this separate sheet of paper that was given to us, which is the revision of the unapproved budget, and compare it to the letter that the Secretariat of State sent with the Pope’s criteria for reducing personnel costs. If we could, on Cipriani’s suggestion, render an opinion of possible approval so as to say that the unapproved budget, which provided for a 25 million euros deficit, has been revised down to 10 million, and therefore reduced by 15, it could be provisionally supported, with the criteria of the Secretariat of State.

Pell:… For the moment I think there’s little, almost nothing we should change so that we can make sure of where we are. We don’t want big revolutions in the next three months …

Calcagno: Thank you. First I’d like to assure His Eminence that our collaboration will be as full as it was with the visits of Promontory and COSEA in past months. Having said this, I think that if the budget for the ordinary activities of the Holy See is approved today, it should be valid not only because APSA continues to exist or not exist, but for the very fact that the Holy See has to be able to go forward. There the new structure that you will head will certainly have to make its maneuvers, its proposals …

Ironic remark by a cardinal:… Maneuvers …

Calcagno:… variations. But as a fundamental basis in my opinion the budget should be indicated as valid in the framework of the current year, because the year has already begun!

Pell:… We are not in a position today to approve something for a year. Something ad interim, okay …

Vallini:… The new dicastery will have time to equip itself with the tools that we here today are at least familiar with … unless Cardinal Pell can tell me that all this work has already been done and that in the Holy Father’s Chirograph motu proprio a statute is coming out that regulates the competencies of the new body that we have only just learned about this morning.

Meisner: Distinguished brothers, first of all my best wishes to Cardinal Pell, who has been seated with us for many years. We have worked hard together and I am happy that we have found a new solution. The road from Sydney to Rome should not be a way of the cross but rather a Triumphal March. My simple question is: we have been given a newly revised budget. And I want to ask: our work today—and tomorrow—is not to discuss the new dicastery but rather to discuss these budgets, and then to draw the consequences …

Pell then quoted the motu proprio, whose title included a phrase from the Gospel according to Luke, Fidelis dispensator et prudens—the faithful and prudent administrator:

The responsibility of the economic and financial sectors of the Holy See is intimately linked to its own particular mission, not only in its service to the Holy Father in the exercise of his universal ministry but also with respect to how they correspond to the common good in light of integral human development.

The Secretariat of the new dicastery would handle financial planning, and from now on would be preparing the budget. It would be in charge of economic management and vigilance over the agencies of the Holy See and Vatican City. These were competencies that had previously been assigned to the Secretariat of State, which from now on would deal only with diplomatic relations. The Secretariat of State and the Secretariat for the Economy were placed on the same level: both would answer directly to the Holy Father, but Parolin and Pell would have to work together. But the two men would never get along, and there would be no follow up to the Pope’s motion to expand the Council of Eight Cardinals, on which Pell served, to include Parolin.

The establishment of the Secretariat for the Economy sent shock waves that would be felt not only in the Secretariat of State but also in the economic dicasteries. Through the creation of an auditor general with control over all the accounts, the Prefecture had been effectively voided. From July 2014 on, APSA would be split in two, losing jurisdiction over the ordinary section, where Pell would take over. It would thus exercise the functions only of a central bank, losing its power over the immense real estate holdings in houses, offices, and palaces. But this proposal did not get off the ground, either.

As for the IOR and its scandals, Francis preferred not to get involved for the moment. It remained outside the perimeter of the Secretariat for the Economy, which did not have full control over internal accounts. Father Lombardi would explain, feigning serenity, at a press conference, that the IOR would thus “not be touched by this reorganization, which has a much broader horizon, but it will continue to be an object of study and reflection.”

Approval of the Budgets

The meeting was nearing its end, but someone had to break the stalemate over the unapproved budgets. The most realistic proposal came from Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Archbishop of Milan:

Scola: Here we cannot give approval for one year or two months or three months. When the new reality is able to redo the budget it will redo it and submit it: this is my opinion. Let me add that unfortunately I will not be present from tomorrow afternoon on because Milan is not a small diocese, and I have been away for eight days …

Parolin: I don’t think anyone will be here, Eminence, rest assured.

Scola: Well then, I commend the efforts that have led to a saving of 9,612,000 euros and I don’t want to hold up the discussion. I approve the modified budget that was prepared for the Holy See.

Tong: I, too, congratulate my classmate George Pell. I only wish to propose that the new structure pay attention to two things: the first is to try to gradually establish a series of standards for the staff and … a pay scale … You can’t expect everyone to work for free …

Pell:… In order for the people in the congregations to learn how to do a budget, there might be arrangements to send some of them to Paris, Oxford and Madrid for short-term or long-term courses on administration and economics. We will do many things in terms of efficiency and savings but we will not enter into religious or spiritual matters. As the Pope said, we are simple bankers.

Parolin: The Cardinal has inspired others to speak. Cardinal Scherer …

Scherer: Now I understand more clearly that we as a council have nothing to say because our work is over. As for the budget and whether or not to approve it, we’ve waited this long, we can wait another two months if necessary … But I wanted to make an observation. I think it would be very useful to set down some rules, some general principles that apply when you are drawing up a budget, otherwise everyone will do their budget as they please …

Pell: We will sit down with a congregation and we will say: this year you have such and such amount of money and you can only have this many workers, but then inside this congregation the responsibility for the decisions will be yours … And if you spend more, much more, the next year we will cut your budget and you’ll have to find the money in your reserves. In many, many places the reserves are adequate, thank God … Thank God, because there are many challenges for the Holy See. But here and there, there is a lot more money than we ever knew about and that has never appeared in the balance sheets. And we thank God for these buried treasures.

Parolin: Good, we can consider our meeting adjourned … We’ll carry on with the revised budgets until the new structure has produced a new budget.

The meeting concluded with two solid points. The first was the reorganization of the Curia hierarchy in matters pertaining to the economic and financial structure. The second was the budgets: they would have to be approved by the new Council for the Economy. Pell had won the battle: for months the budgets would remain in limbo, waiting to be approved, leaving the Holy See in a kind of financial purgatory: they would carry on with the budgets corrected by the auditors—this was Parolin’s policy—until the new Council ordered by Bergoglio kicked into action.

The stalemate would last until March 21, when Father Luigi Mistò, the right-hand man of Calcagno, would send to all the departments that reported to APSA the guidelines for rewriting the 2014 budget with “corrections and modifications to the expenses initially planned, thereby incorporating the observation of the international auditors.”

Pell made it clear that he was very familiar with the Curia’s secrets. At the conclusion of the Council of 15 he gave his cardinal brothers advance notice of what the COSEA experts had discovered in their analysis of the Holy See’s finances: namely, that many administrative bodies had “buried treasure” that was not recorded on the balance sheets. Do not fool yourself—the Australian Cardinal intimated—those mysterious off-budget reserves are providential today, in the midst of the crisis: they will become indispensable as we move forward, given the constant revelations of deficits in the account books, which are only destined to get worse.

Starting in March 2014, Pell dedicated himself to his new assignment. He met often with Francis on a confidential basis to come to an agreement on the new members of the Council for the Economy, and he flew to Malta to meet with Zahra, who would be one of the five COSEA commissioners chosen to be a lay member of the new Council. The other two laypersons included a friend of Zahra, the Italian Francesco Vermiglio. The selection of Vermiglio sparked discontent and criticism because of a potential conflict of interest. According to an investigation by the Italian magazine l’Espresso, Vermiglio was Zahra’s partner in Misco Advisory Ltd., a joint venture created to stimulate Italian investments in the small Mediterranean island of Malta.

Seven of the cardinals who had served on the preceding C15 were also confirmed. The only new religious faces were Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo from the diocese of Galveston-Houston, and Reinhard Marx, the Archbishop of Munich. The Secretariat’s offices would be in the St. John Tower, a medieval structure located in the highest part of the Vatican gardens, generally used to receive important guests. In practice, it was the only free building in the whole state.

Logistics would be handled by Xuereb, who asked Calcagno and Monsignor Fernando Vérgez Alzaga, Secretary of the Governorate, to order “20 computers, 6 printers, 21 landline phones, a loudspeaker for sending and receiving calls,” so that all the work stations distributed over four floors and their relative internet connections would be immediately operative.2 He also asked that the most important offices be equipped with shredders to guarantee the confidentiality of the most sensitive files.

The new Council had four important appointments on the calendar for 2014: the first was on May 2 in the Sala Bologna of the Apostolic Palace, then there were others in July, September, and December. The seating arrangements for these first meetings already gave a sense of the change under way. Religious and laypersons would alternate, a visual demonstration of how power is distributed. But unfortunately that didn’t happen. The community chosen by Francis, made up of strong personalities from different cultures and backgrounds, was riddled with venom, malicious gossip, and traps. And month after month, its initial ambitious project would be downsized.

The Rise of Pell, Survivor of the Pedophile Scandals

Pell had been promoted to cardinal in 2003 by John Paul II. His controversial past deserves the appropriate attention. In 2010 Benedict XVI had mentioned him as a possible prefect of the powerful Congregation for Bishops, to succeed Giovanni Battista Re, who had reached the age of retirement. But when Francis arrived at the Vatican he didn’t know Pell, or at least they weren’t friends, although they had met in 2012 when the Australian was appointed Father of the XIII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops.

At the Vatican, immediately after the election of Francis, Pell became one of the Councilors on the C15. The Council is a venerable body but without great power. Yet by increasing its functions through an internal audit, it had the capability of becoming the operative arm of the Pope’s soft revolution.

In the spring of 2013, Pell was trying to envision the pathway to change and to identify the councilors closest to the Pope. He guessed correctly the new climate that the Pope wanted to bring into the Curia, and he wanted to play a central role in the project of restructuring the Vatican. In particular, he started to spend time with Cardinal Santos Abril y Castelló, Francis’s good friend and the next President of the IOR. He also approached Monsignor Vallejo Balda, the Secretary of the Prefecture and later the Coordinator of COSEA. (Vallejo Balda was the prelate who had immediately reported many critical flaws to the Pontiff, starting with the embezzlement he had discovered at the St. Mary Major Basilica.) Finally, the Australian Cardinal developed a solid relationship with Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, and the coordinator of the then C8.

Pell’s detractors claimed that the Cardinal had a single objective in those weeks: to obtain for himself a post in the Apostolic Palace and leave Sydney behind, thereby fleeing the aggressive investigation being conducted by the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. There had been many reported cases of pedophilia in the diocese of Melbourne from 1996 to 2001, when Pell was Archbishop. It was suspected that the new Prefect had not cooperated with the investigators and had concealed the dramatic stories of minors who had been abused by priests in his diocese.

There was also the time, in October 2012, that Pell himself had been cleared of accusations that he had abused a twelve-year-old catechism student at a camp for altar boys in 1961. Or the accusations against him by a former altar boy, John Ellis, shortly after his appointment as Prefect. Ellis named the Church responsible for the violence he had suffered between 1974 and 1979, when he was abused by a priest who has since died. The former altar boy lost the first lawsuit in 2007. During the investigation his physical scars verified the abuse but the diocese was not found legally responsible for the appalling incidents.

Pell was left legally unscathed by these various accusations, which he had always rejected, but they did land him in the headlines of newspapers throughout the world. His biggest accuser was Peter Saunders, a victim of abuse during his childhood in Wimbledon and as of December 2014, handpicked by Bergoglio to be a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. Saunders had repeatedly demanded that Pell be fired. During an episode of the Australian edition of 60 Minutes, Saunders accused Pell of dodging the work and the questions of the Australian Commission of Inquest. “He is making a mockery of the child victims of sexual abuse. He is a dangerous individual, almost sociopathic. He acted with callousness and cold-heartedness.”

Nor should we forget the criticisms of the “Melbourne Response,” the 1996 protocol approved by Pell that provided for modest damages to the victims of pedophile priests. The document put a cap on damages of $50,000, whereas in court the victims were being awarded even six times that amount. The Cardinal had a ready response: “Many of the people we helped through the compensation panel would have received nothing or very little if they had gone through the courts.” But the findings of the Australian Royal Commission in its preliminary report were truly negative:

The high prelate did not act fairly from a Christian point of view. The archdiocese over which he presided preferred to safeguard and protect its own resources rather than provide justice.

Pell was also famous for some of his particularly unfortunate public statements, starting with his remarks about Islam being “an essentially bellicose religion, the Koran is studded with invocations to violence.” Another incident was on August 22, 2014, when, during a hearing of the Royal Commission on videoconference, Pell argued that “pedophile priests are like truck drivers who molest hitchhikers: neither the Church nor the trucking company can be held responsible,” sparking outrage in the courthouse and in public opinion. Yet it should also be mentioned that during his testimony, the Cardinal confessed that his archdiocese had not “acted fairly.”

The Commission’s Costs

But nothing seemed to slow down the career of this cardinal, who now had an agenda filled with appointments, for the purpose of rationalizing the Curia’s accounts once and for all. The action would be planned and developed over a three year period, from 2014–2016. The roadmap would create conflicts and enemies but it could also count on sizable resources.

The Secretariat had a surprisingly large budget: 4.2 million euros. To understand how it was used, let’s take a look at its ledgers. First, there were the expenses of COSEA, which cost 2.5 million euros. Much of this amount went to consultants’ fees, since the Commission’s members all worked pro bono.

Thanks to my access to the documentation, I am the first who can specify who was paid what. Promontory received 980,000 euros for its audit of APSA, McKinsey 420,000 for the Vatican Media Center, Oliver Wyman 270,000 for its analysis of the pension funds, Ernst & Young 230,000 for its inspections of the Governorate, and KPMG 110,000 for accounting procedures. Although the official amounts would never be released by the small circle of the Pope’s loyalists, the consultancy fees were the basis for one of the first attacks on Francis: how could the Holy Father balance the budget if he was spending such large amounts of money on a new round of consultants?

The Secretariat for the Economy would not become operative until March 2015, when its rules and regulations were approved. But in 2014, according to the reconstructions of newspapers, more than 500,000 euros were spent on travel, computers, clothing, and consultancies. Danny Casey, an economist and longtime friend of Pell, reportedly received 15,000 euros a month for his services:

For Casey the Secretariat of the Economy even rented an apartment for 2,900 euros a month on Via dei Coronari and paid for top-quality office and home furnishings: under the item “wallpaper” the table indicates 7,292 euros; more than 47,000 for “furniture and cabinets,” including a kitchen-sink cabinet for 4,600 euros, in addition to various jobs for 33,000 euros. The Cardinal added in a handwritten note expenses also for purchases at Gammarelli’s, the historic tailor shop that since 1798 has dressed the Curia of the eternal city: in general the cardinals pay out of pocket for their cassock and cap, but this time the Secretariat received a bill directly of 2,508 euros for clothing.3

Despite his controversial past and expensive tastes, especially at a time of budget cuts and austerity, Pell was a frightening figure, and for many in the Curia this was the main reason behind the attacks on him. Cardinal Maradiaga would brand these reports as “slander: it’s like Marxism that attacked the person since it couldn’t attack the idea. Pell is a frugal man and he does not like luxury.”

Poisonous Rumors

From the day of his installation at the Secretariat of the Economy, poisonous rumors had been spread about Pell in an effort to isolate, discredit, and exhaust him. The consolidation of all the economic departments under a superdicastery was behind schedule. For months there was no movement on the transfer of competencies, such as placing the Secretariat of State’s personnel office under a single unit directed by Pell. Key staff members had still not been appointed. All of this left the situation of the economic dicasteries exactly as it had been before: apart from public announcements, nothing had changed. For example, although there was an announcement of the transfer to Pell’s jurisdiction of APSA’s ordinary section—which handles the real estate—nothing was done.

Although the Prefecture was supposed to be closed as early as possible, it was still open for business throughout the summer of 2015. The position of auditor general had been authorized in February 2014, but there would not be an appointment until sixteen months later, on June 5, 2015. The man selected was Libero Milone, a professional with thirty-two years of experience at Deloitte, a consultancy company in which he had also served as CEO (for Italy). Into the summer of 2015, there was still friction between the Secretariat for the Economy and APSA over who should keep the archives, since they shared jurisdiction over real estate: one handled management, the other supervision.

Vatican managers opposed and obstructed Pell and Bergoglio’s plans, in the conviction that they could stop innovation and discredit the Pope through a war of attrition. “They used to say,” a cardinal confided in me, “that the Church is two thousand years old and will survive even the priests. Today they might regret to admit that some bad apples in the Curia will survive even the pontiffs of change.”

The Cleaning Crew

To accelerate the reform and disempower the opposition, on both the theological and financial fronts, Francis began to replace en masse the members of the old guard still in command at many of the offices that controlled the activities of the small state. But first he equipped himself with the means to make it easier. In the fall of 2014 he enacted regulations that would set the retirement age at 75 for directors of dicasteries. He also introduced a measure allowing him to request early retirement for members, “after having made known the reasons for the request” to the person affected in the context of a “fraternal dialogue”—as can be read in the document signed by Parolin on November 5, 2014.

In this manner many cardinals in the Curia were shown the door. And at the same time as he was drafting the new regulations for Pell, the Holy Father removed the American Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke from his position as Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Segnatura. Burke became patron of the Sovereign Order of Malta, a largely honorary post. This conservative cardinal, once described as “a harpsichord playing in the desert” by some of Francis’s loyalists, was one of the most vociferous opponents of the Pontiff. “Many of the faithful”—he stated after the Synod—“are feeling a bit seasick because they feel the church’s ship has lost its way.”

In March 2015 another member of the Curia, Cardinal Versaldi, President of the Prefecture, was transferred to the Congregation for Catholic Education. Monsignor Mariano Crociata was demoted, from the powerful Secretary General of the Italian Bishops’ Conference to Bishop of the small diocese of Latina. Crociata was famous for his gaffe on the day of Bergoglio’s election, when the Italian Bishops’ Conference that he headed issued a press release welcoming the elevation to Peter’s Throne of Cardinal Angelo Scola. He was replaced by Monsignor Nuncio Galantino, who in August 2015 openly attacked Italian politics as “a harem of cronies and con artists: the people are not just a flock of sheep to be guided and sheered.” He also took aim at the hardline anti-immigration policies of the Northern League: “Do not seek votes on the backs of others.”4

Jessica and the Others

For months Francis was in a silent tug of war with the Dean of Papal Protocol, the powerful Francesco Camaldo, who had been demoted to Canon of the Vatican basilica. Camaldo is the prelate who, on the evening of March 13, 2013, after the white smoke, could be seen in the second row to the left of the Pope on the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square. This picture went around the world and was a source of no small embarrassment for Francis.

For many years Camaldo had been the Secretary of the former Vicar of Rome, Cardinal Ugo Poletti. The names of both men appeared in an investigation into the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, the teenage daughter of a clerk at the Prefecture of the Pontifical house, who on June 22, 1983, after her classes at a music school in Rome, was never seen again. The Italian prosecutors had long connected her disappearance with the odd burial place of Renatino De Pedis. The alleged cashier of the Magliana gang—an organized crime group that controlled the capital’s drug market in the 1980s—De Pedis had for mysterious reasons been laid to rest in the crypt of the Sant’Appolinaire Basilica. This strange burial had been authorized by Cardinal Poletti while the investigators believed that the practical details had been left to his travel secretary, Camaldo.

Francis might also have received word of the nickname by which Camaldo was known in certain corners of the capital as emerged during the prosecutor’s investigations: Jessica. It was hardly fitting for a man of the cloth, especially one so close to the Pope. He was not the only prelate or cardinal with such a unique sobriquet. There was also “Mother Superior,” a Sicilian monsignor with a penchant for champagne and novices; “Peacock,” a vain cardinal from northern Italy who enjoyed being “pampered” by a handsome young entrepreneur who did business with the Vatican; “Monica Lewinsky,” and many more. The associates of the so-called gay lobby had nicknames that identified them by their origins or sexual proclivities. They would allegedly procure the services of laymen with criminal records who at night, after work, would cruise the Roman bars and nightclubs in search of young boys to satisfy the vices of the senior prelates who protected them. As compensation, the panderers would apparently receive tips, protected careers in Vatican offices, or government jobs, and higher pay than normally accorded a person with their job description or skill set.

I should specify, however, that Francis did not find a “gay lobby” in the Vatican. That is to say, there is no structured homosexual organization that determines appointments, assigns contracts, or controls dicasteries, money and people’s lives and careers. But the reality is actually worse. In the clergy being gay is experienced as a secret, an unspeakable weakness, a broken taboo, and an easy target for blackmail. “Many cardinals cultivate a secret vice”—explains a banker, a Vatican consultant who preferred to remain anonymous—“some like boys, some like models, some are passionate about food and wine, some are greedy for money. If a con artist is looking for a mark, once he’s pinpointed a cardinal’s weakness he’s on easy street. He satisfies the cardinal’s itch and he’ll be compensated handsomely.” But doesn’t this happen in every bureaucracy of the world? “No, at the Vatican they live with the hypocritical fear of causing a scandal, which conditions their choices, their reactions, and is unequaled in other parts of the world. They worry that the truth will alienate believers from the faith, which is why they keep everything hidden. At a very high cost. It’s a shame that all these secrets foster pressure and blackmail. Francis is trying to end this situation but he is running into strong resistance.”

The consultant then related the story of a monsignor who had been tailed on his visits to gay massage parlors on Via Merulana and in the Parioli district. A few choice photographs and the priest was a goner. Anyone who doesn’t want to end up being blackmailed has to search for friendships and hookups on special gay websites that guarantee absolute anonymity. But sometimes these encounters lead to tragedies, like the case of a cardinal’s young lover who years ago jumped off the building in Rome where he worked, tired of the pressures and the blackmail to which his beloved cardinal was being subjected.

Immediately after his election, Francis read the notes left for him by Benedict XVI, the report on the leaked documents, and he realized that the situation—also in terms of the morality and habits of his collaborators—was out of control. He asked for the files of the stipends and monthly salaries of the main advisors, where he discovered that there were secretaries being paid as much as 15,000 euros a month. “These sums”—as one of Bergoglio’s collaborators commented—“are proof of friendship for sexual purposes.” The reaction of the Pontiff is not known, but he is certainly aware that on this front, from the times of Benedict XVI to today, the situation shows no sign of improving.