An Unprecedented Change
Pope Francis was not unaware of the Curia’s attempts to scuttle his reforms, and he knew he would have to fight to prevent his hopes from being crushed by the interests of the few and the inertia of the many at the Vatican. These hopes were also shared by nuns, brothers, priests, and all the humble servants of the Church, who on March 13, 2013, after the appearance of the white smoke, had waited with joy—but also apprehension—to hear the name of the new Pontiff. When Jorge Mario Bergoglio first stepped on to the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square, he wore no frills or ornaments. He uttered a simple sentence that warmed the hearts of the millions of faithful: “Good evening … pray for me,” he exhorted them.
On July 18, 2013—only a couple of weeks after his dramatic meeting with the cardinals in the Sala Bologna—the Pope appointed a new commission of inquiry into the Vatican finances: the Commission for Reference on the Organization of the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See (COSEA). Its job was to collect all of the information on the financial management of the Curia, and the Commission would report directly to Francis. It was a brand-new body that would not diminish the authority of the Special Council of fifteen cardinals, chaired by Secretary of State Bertone, but would still present an open challenge to the powers that be. The day of reckoning was near. Francis’s move was an implicit reprimand to the men who had managed the Holy See during the pontificate of Benedict XVI and, prior to him, of John Paul II.
The members of the Commission selected by the Pope were vetted and briefed by the Substitute of the Secretary of State, Peter Wells.1 The chairmanship of the new Commission was assigned to Joseph Zahra of Malta, one of the international auditors who in late June had signed the letter to the Pope alerting him to the impending financial crisis at the Holy See.2 He was the right man at the right time. In addition to his close relations with the leaders of multinational corporations and international finance, he was trustworthy, a paramount concern for Francis. The selection of Zahra marked the start of a new era and sent a warning signal to the Curia: the Pope prized and was ready to reward those who had the courage to denounce the wrongdoing and opaque interests inimical to the pastoral mission of the Holy Roman Church.
Francis’s attitude represented a radical shift from the papacy of his predecessor. Under Benedict XVI, Monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò, Secretary of the Governorate, reported to the Pontiff outrageous expenditures such as a Christmas tree in St. Peter’s Square that cost 500,000 euros. As his reward, he was discredited at the Vatican and exiled to the United States as the Apostolic Nunzio (a permanent diplomatic representative of the Holy See) to Washington, a lower-level position. The dramatic expulsion of Viganò was one of the reasons why Benedict XVI’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, contacted me and decided to trust me with the thick file of correspondence between Viganò, Bertone, and the Holy Father. (These letters documented waste, corruption, and injustice at the Vatican and were the basis of my previous book, His Holiness.)
Zahra was not expecting this assignment but he shifted into high gear immediately. The first item of business was a trip back to his beautiful home in Balzan, a small town of four thousand people in the heart of Malta, where he closed his pending case files. From the office of his financial consultancy on the first floor of the Fino Building, on Notabile Road in Mriehel, Malta, his assistant, Marthese Spiteri-Gonzi, was handling all the details of his move to Casa Santa Marta. To prepare for his new assignment, Zahra set about rereading the minutes of the biannual meetings of the international auditors. After all the warnings that had gone unheeded under Benedict XVI, now it appeared that Francis was willing to hear the truth about financial irregularities and appreciated the individuals who had the courage to report them. In addition to Zahra’s appointment as Chair, another auditor, the German Jochen Messemer, also entered the pontifical commission.3
The papal decree establishing the Commission, known formally as a chirograph, was signed on July 18. The functions of the new structure were summarized in the seven points of the chirograph. In point 3 the Pontiff was clear: “the administrative bodies concerned … are required to collaborate readily with the Commission. The official secret and any other restrictions established by judicial norms do not impede or limit the Commission’s access to documents, data and information necessary for the execution of the tasks assigned to it.” In other words, the commission would have complete autonomy and access in its investigation. Its every question had to be answered, and confidentiality could not be used as an excuse.
Zahra would work with seven other members: the coordinator and six advisors, “all appointed by the Supreme Pontiff”—according to the chirograph—“experts in the juridical, economic, financial, and organizational matters dealt with by the Commission.” Coordination and relations with the ecclesiastical world would be handled by the Secretary of the Prefecture, Monsignor Lucio Ángel Vallejo Balda, an Opus Dei member who had earned the trust of Francis.4 The Pontiff knew that he was playing a dangerous game in attacking the entrenched centers of power. “The situation is of an unimaginable gravity,” he would say to his closest collaborators. Many anomalies within the Church structures “are rooted in solipsism, a kind of theological narcissism.” The basic problem is that a solipsistic Church “falls ill.”5
All the Commission’s Men
The members of the Commission were almost all European, with the exception of George Yeo, an expert in economics and finance who for years had held ministerial positions in his native Singapore.6 Well-known and respected in the East, he had also been Chief of the General Staff of the Air Force. At the Vatican, Yeo had an important admirer: the Australian cardinal George Pell, who was carefully following the Pope’s every move in order to earn a position for himself in the renewal of the Curia.7
The youngest member of the Commission, and the only Italian, was a woman: Francesca Chaouqui, thirty years old, born in a small town in the province of Cosenza to an Italian mother and a French father of Moroccan origin. She had worked previously at Ernst & Young, in the field of public relations and communications, prior to which she had learned the ropes at the influential law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe Italia. She was married to an IT specialist who had worked with the Vatican for many years. It would be her job to create the new department in charge of Vatican communications, from the press room to the daily newspaper Osservatore Romano.
Another member of the Commission was Jean-Baptiste de Franssu, a French manager from the field of strategic consultancy. Cardinal Bertone had brought him to the Vatican and appointed him to various posts: in his first year at the Vatican, he had quickly risen through the ranks.8
A Spanish member of the Commission, Enrique Llanos, formerly of KPMG, was a personal friend of John Scott, vice president of KPMG Worldwide, a leading accounting and management consultancy firm.
The most senior advisor was from France. Jean Videlain-Sevestre was also an expert in consultancy and investments, a businessman with significant experience at Citroën and Michelin. He immediately established the approach that his colleagues should take to the investigation: “Our Committee has to be beyond reproach, independent, and competent,” he wrote on the eve of the much-awaited first meeting of the group. Its job was to help the Holy Father achieve the objective he had first indicated as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires: “The new Pope must be able to clean up the Roman Curia,” he had told a religious group from the Schoenstatt movement.9
As their working quarters, the team chose a modest first-floor location in Casa Santa Marta: Room 127, just a staircase and a corridor away from the papal suite. The office would be dubbed “Area 10,” the sum total of its numbers. A more revealing nickname was coined by Nicola Maio, the Secretary of the Commission: “St. Michael’s Room,” after Michael the Archangel, the guardian angel of delicate tasks. (The winged Archangel Michael, with armor and a sword, is always celebrated as the defender of faith in God against the satanic hordes of Lucifer.)
The most popular saying among the members during their meetings was in Spanish, the language of Bergoglio: “Aquì la gracias de dios es mucha pero el demonio está en persona”—Here the grace of God is great but the devil is here in person.
The utmost attention and discretion was required to protect the sensitive information that was being gathered. A revolution was about to begin and the Pope’s men knew the risks involved. To prevent wiretaps, Zahra immediately signed an agreement with Vodafone (a multi-national mobile phone company): every advisor would receive a special Maltese phone number and an iPhone 5. The members called it the “white telephone,” after the color of the cover. A private line would be used to send all the passwords for access to encrypted documents, which would be sent by email. At the cost of 100,000 euros, an exclusive server was also provided that would be accessible only to the computers of the COSEA members. Don Alfredo Abbondi, the office chief of the Prefecture, requested from the procurement office of the Governorate a safe in which to keep the most highly classified dossiers. The members of the Commission felt protected by these measures. Little did they realize that every precaution would prove to be useless.
Objective Number One
Four days after the formal act of establishing the Commission, COSEA was already operative. The members were excited and highly motivated. The work promised to be both delicate and massive. “The Holy Father has identified seven key elements to be evaluated in the Holy See,” according to the preliminary document.10 The most important ranged from the “over-expansion in employees” and the “lack of transparency in expenditures and procedures,” to “insufficient control over suppliers and their contracts.” They needed to find out the “number, physical condition and rents of real estate whose status was unclear,” as well as the revenue, to counter the “inadequate oversight of investments in terms of risk and ethical standards.” There would also be a careful examination of the so-called “satellite administrations” and the cash-flow and financial transactions in certain dicasteries.
On July 22, the Coordinating Secretary, Monsignor Vallejo Balda—who handled communications between the Commission and the various representatives of the Curia—asked Cardinal Versaldi, the President of the Prefecture and his direct superior, to circulate a letter prepared by COSEA addressed to every administrative body within the Vatican walls. Versaldi did so a few hours later. In the letter, the Commission requested the following documentation: financial statements from the past five years, lists of employees, lists of outside collaborators and their résumés, all wages and compensation, and, finally, contracts for the supply of goods and services that had been signed since January 1, 2013.
The next to the last paragraph of the long letter containing COSEA’s requests set off the loudest alarms within the Curia. It was a specific, targeted request on a very sensitive issue in the Church that touched the hearts of millions of the faithful: saints, who through their actions set an example of universal goodness and love. For many Catholics, saints were objects of worship. The Commission wanted to receive immediately the financial statements, movements, and banking documents “of the economic entities relative to postulators of beatification and canonization causes.”
The first battle front had been opened. The Congregation for the Causes of Saints was being summoned for questioning. This structure manages the complex process for conferring sainthood or beatitude on individuals who have distinguished themselves by their good deeds. Every cause is handled and proposed by a postulator, who opens the cause, prepares the investigation, documents it, and, over the years, bolsters the file with acts and findings that will hopefully lead to the beatification or canonization of the candidate. Currently there are 2,500 pending causes filed by 450 postulators.
The Congregation was headed by a staunch ally of Bertone, Cardinal Angelo Amato, who was also a close associate of the previous Pope. Amato had taken Bertone’s place at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as the deputy of Joseph Ratzinger, who after his election to the throne of St. Peter made Amato the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
This powerful cardinal grasped the exact meaning of the message forwarded by Versaldi: the Pope knew where to strike. He was well informed and he acted quickly. COSEA gave the departments only a few days to collect the information: “While taking into consideration the period in which the present request is made, we expect to receive the documentation by July 31.” Eight days, for a Curia accustomed to peaceful summer months with little work and a Pope at Castel Gandolfo taking refuge from the summer heat, was an unprecedented timeline.
There were various explanations for this tight deadline. First, the Commission wanted to prevent any alteration and manipulation of information: the less time for the ill-intentioned, the better. And there was an important date on the calendar. On August 3, the members of the Commission would meet for their inaugural session. They would assemble in the small conference room opposite the sacristy of the chapel, in the same place where only a few weeks earlier Francis had urged Zahra and the auditors of the Prefecture to be brave, and report wrongdoing for the sake of change.
The Saints’ Factory
The first meeting of the Commission was convened at noon. It was also attended by the Pope, who remained for fifty minutes, taking the floor several times to express his firm will and his encouragement to the participants. I have the minutes of that meeting in my possession. They document the Pope’s absolute clarity. (Note below that Francis is speaking—he refers to himself in the third person.)
We at the Curia need an approach that is different, fresher than our traditional way of doing things. At the root of our problems is a nouveau riche attitude that allows money to be spent indiscriminately. In the meantime, we lose sight of the reasons for what we are doing—our goal is that the money go to help the poor and to people living in misery. The current problems are culture and a lack of responsibility. The Pope is confident that the Commission will introduce these reforms, but he realizes that we have to be cautious when we [address questions that might involve] jobs and means of subsistence for the laypeople who work at the Vatican. He insists that the Commission be courageous in making its recommendations and not look back. He will always consult the Commission before making changes, but it has no collegial authority. If the Pope disagrees with our proposals, he will discuss them with us and he will make the decision.11
Without reforms, the pontificate would fail. So as soon as Francis left the meeting, the members of COSEA established their program of work, with six priorities:
1. APSA: especially the special section—the need for a strategic review and a microanalysis of its operations, including Real Estate;
2. The management of the accounts of the postulants who work for the Congregation for the Causes of Saints;
3. Commercial activities (supermarket, pharmacy, etc.) within the Vatican walls;
4. Management of the hospitals;
5. The assessment of artworks;
6. Pensions.
To help achieve their objectives, the Commission also turned to external advisors from the world of business consultation: giants like KPMG, McKinsey & Company, Ernst & Young, and Promontory Financial Group. A task force of seventy experts from outside companies who would work with the Vatican was set up.
At the request for documentation, many offices replied immediately, sending their papers and offering every possible collaboration. But not everyone complied. The most disappointing response came from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints: “The Congregation”—so read the seraphic response of the department led by Cardinal Amato—“has nothing to do with the management of postulators and is not in possession of the requested documentation.”
No documents. No justification and bookkeeping for an activity involving tens of millions of euros, at least not in the possession of the Congregation. Yet these are huge sums of money for which Vatican regulations demand proper bookkeeping. To simply open a cause for beatification costs 50,000 euros, supplemented by the 15,000 euros in actual operating costs. This amount covers the rights of the Holy See and the hefty compensation of the expert theologians, physicians, and bishops who examine the cause. After adding the costs of the researchers’ time, the drafting of the candidate’s positio—a kind of résumé of all his or her works—and finally, the work of the postulator, the amount skyrockets. The average price tag comes to about 500,000 euros. We then have to consider the costs of all the thank-you gifts required for the prelates who are invited to festivities and celebrations held at crucial moments in the process, to say a few words about the acts and miracles of the future saint or blessed. Record spending on these causes has reached as high as 750,000 euros, such as the process that led to the beatification in 2007 of Antonio Rosmini.
Under John Paul II the “saints’ factory” anointed 1,338 blesseds in 147 rites of beatification and 482 saints in 51 celebrations—astronomical figures that far surpass any previous levels in Church history. Numbers that had led Pope John Paul II, as far back as 1983, to order that the funds for these causes be managed by the postulators, who were assigned the “duty to keep regularly-updated ledgers on the capital, value, interests, and money in the coffers for every single cause.”12 The postulators conduct a delegated activity that requires oversight. Apparently no one had ever bothered to check on them.
The Commission Freezes the Bank Accounts
Amato’s response from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints was baffling. He was implicitly acknowledging that the financial activities involved in these causes were unregulated. The Commission’s reaction was swift and severe. On August 3, at the very first meeting, Zahra, after obtaining the Pope’s assent, made an unprecedented decision—he asked Versaldi to freeze all the bank accounts linked to the postulators and their cases at APSA and the IOR.
It is clear that the activity of the postulators is not autonomous but rather “delegated” by a superior authority, to which they must report and be accountable. Since once “a cause has been transmitted to the Holy See the task of oversight is up to the holy Congregation,” and since the task of oversight is equivalent to that of a bishop in the diocesan phase of the cause, it is deemed necessary to evaluate in concert with this Prefecture the taking of possible precautionary measures, in order to enable the competent Congregation to do whatever is necessary to perform the task assigned to it. The following is hereby requested: to order, with immediate effect, the temporary freezing of the accounts of the postulators and of the individual causes at the IOR or APSA, whoever the account holder may be.
Zahra also revealed the clue that set off the alarm, which concerns the poor. In fact, Vatican regulations provide that
for every cause that is brought before the Holy Congregation, the postulators shall deposit a contribution to the Fund for the Causes of the Poor [a fund created to finance beatification causes submitted by the poorest dioceses]. After the beatification of a servant of God, and once all the expenses required for the cause have been settled, 20% of the remaining amounts of the offerings from the faithful collected for that cause [must be] devolved to the Fund for the Causes of the Poor. After canonization, it is up to the Holy See to dispose of the remaining amounts of the offerings collected, one part of which, to be established on a case-by-case basis, will be assigned to the Fund for the Causes of the Poor. From the examination of the books relative to the Fund for the Causes of the Poor presented by the Congregation for recent years, it would appear that these obligations have not been fulfilled. In fact, the above-mentioned Fund has grown in a very limited manner.
In other words, the Fund for the Causes of the Poor—indispensable to assuring the processing of applications from dioceses with fewer resources—was not growing. This raised the Commission’s suspicions. Zahra requested the freezing of accounts and demanded full documentation for each and every postulator and cause. In the first six months of its investigation, COSEA was shocked to find that considerable sums of cash arrived in the offices of the postulators for which there was no proper accounting, and concluded that there was “insufficient oversight of the cash-flow for canonizations.”13
Attention was focused in particular on “two lay postulators (Andrea Ambrosi and Silvia Correale) who managed various cases and commanded high rates. Each of them was responsible for 90 causes out of a total of 2,500 divided among 450 postulators.”14 Since each postulator manages an average of five to six cases, this means that two people together control a disproportionate number: 180, constituting a kind of monopoly. Among the most significant examples emerging from COSEA’s investigation:
• From 2008 to 2013, 43,000 euros were spent on a canonization that seems to show no progress and no proper budget or financial statements on how the funds were used;
• One lay postulator offered to conduct an investigation even before opening a canonization process, on the condition that he receive an initial payment of 40,000 euros;
• The printing press associated with one of the postulators listed above [Andrea Ambrosi] appears as one of the three print shops that the Congregation recommends to postulators.15
Another one of COSEA’s files concerns “expenses for a Spanish canonization managed by a professional postulator between 2008 and 2013.”16 The compensation for the postulator was “28,000 euros, another 16,000 for his collaborator, one thousand euros for printing the material and the same amount for various expenses that bloated the costs to 46,000 euros,” as indicated in February 2014 to the cardinals on the Council and the Pope.17
On Monday, August 5, 2013, at the explicit request of Zahra, and after the Congregation for the Causes of Saints had failed to provide any documentation, Cardinal Versaldi sent four letters containing instructions to freeze accounts at the IOR and APSA. The recipients of the letters were Cardinal Domenico Calcagno, President of APSA, and the lawyer Ernst von Freyberg, the head of the IOR. Versaldi also copied Cardinal Raffaele Farina, the Chair of the Pontifical Commission for Reference on the IOR, established by Francis in June, and its coordinator, Monsignor Juan Ignacio Arrieta.
Over at the IOR, at 10:11 A.M. on the same day, the unusual freezing order issued by von Freyberg became operative, to the consternation of various employees. It would take the whole day to block the huge number of accounts: there were more than four hundred bank accounts in all. This was an operation whose dimensions were unprecedented in recent bank history. By six o’clock that day, not a single euro could be withdrawn from any account linked to canonization or beatification procedures. At the IOR, a total of almost 40 million euros was blocked.18
Panic at the IOR
The next day, Tuesday, August 6, the situation became even more tense. At VISA-POS, the IOR office that handles ATM and credit card transactions, one bank official had hesitations. Stefano De Felici wanted written confirmation that the credit cards of a series of high-level clients had been blocked. He gave nine names to the Deputy General Director of the Institute, Rolando Marranci, highlighting the two most prominent names in bold:
Good morning.
On the basis of various communications that this office has received, the following credit cards linked to the accounts of physical persons are to be blocked. Here is the list:
Client |
|
Name |
19878 |
|
Ambrosi, Andrea |
15395 |
|
Batelja, Rev. Juraj |
29913 |
|
Gänswein, H.E. Mons. Georg |
24002 |
|
Kasteel, Mons. Karel |
10673 |
|
Marrazzo, P. Antonio |
27831 |
|
Murphy, Mons. Joseph |
29343 |
|
Nemeth, Mons. Laszlo Imre |
18635 |
|
Paglia, H.E. Mons. Vicenzo |
18625 |
|
Tisler, Rev. Piotr |
I hereby request confirmation that I should proceed to block these accounts.
The measures had also affected the bank account of Monsignor Georg Gänswein, the former personal secretary of Benedict XVI, and now the prefect of the Pontifical House. Also blocked were the accounts of Antonio Marrazzo, postulator for the beatification of Paul VI, Giovanni Battista Montini; and of Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family. With the first moves of the Commission, there was already a risk of a diplomatic incident. To prevent matters from escalating, the general accountant of the Prefecture, Stefano Fralleoni, who had attended many of the international auditors’ meetings and was now helping COSEA with its investigations, wrote directly to von Freyberg:
The provision for the temporary blocking of the accounts of postulators and single causes [for canonization] opened at the IOR and APSA should not be applied to the personal accounts of religious postulators and/or employees of the Holy See who meet the proper requirements to hold an account there.
The postulators were almost all religious, with the exception of two laypeople, the already mentioned Andrea Ambrosi and Silvia Correale. The only safe accounts were those held by religious people or employees who had the right and met the requirements for an account at the Vatican financial institutions. Unfortunately from the documentation examined I am unable to establish which of the four hundred accounts was immediately unblocked. In all probability, they included Monsignor Gänswein’s.
Deputy General Director Marranci received the order directly from Fralleoni.19
The accounts of Andrea Ambrosi and Silvia Correale do not seem to meet the normal requirements that exist for religious personnel or employees of the institutions of the Holy See. It is thus requested as a precautionary measure, and while awaiting the institution’s clarifications of the modalities and origins of the amounts present in these accounts, that the temporary blocking of activities be extended also to the accounts held by the persons highlighted above, according to the same modalities as the accounts held by Causes.
Ambrosi had approximately one million euros in his three bank accounts at the IOR blocked. The Prefecture and COSEA demanded an explanation from him. Ambrosi defended himself in a letter he wrote to Marranci on August 20:
After being introduced by Cardinal Salvatore Pappalardo in around 1985, having engaged in the activities of a postulator, he [Ambrosi, referring to himself in the third person] was allowed to open a personal account, with the exact numbers 19878001/2/3. In the past thirty years there has been a flow into these accounts first of credit from the stakeholders in the various causes as well as donations from the parents of the undersigned and of his wife. The undersigned states that he has never performed professional activities in Italy, that he is not the holder of a VAT number, and that he has always attached to his Italian tax return a statement by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints attesting that he has always performed his activity exclusively for the above-mentioned dicastery. In all these years—almost 40!—the Italian tax authorities have never had any objections. The undersigned, while awaiting, with confidence but concern, the unblocking of his three personal accounts at the earliest, hereby requests that he be allowed to immediately come into possession of 80,000 euros so as to deal with economic commitments already made.
Ambrosi was perhaps the top postulator in the world. For forty years—together with his daughter Angelica and various other collaborators from the five continents—he had handled hundreds of beatification and canonization processes, from Pope John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli) to the Emperor Charles I of Hapsburg. Another interesting activity of the Ambrosi family is the printing shop it owns, which handles the documentation for most of the causes—Novas Res, located in Piazza di Porta Maggiore in Rome. It holds a kind of monopoly, despite the fact that the Vatican has a modern printing shop that could easily publish the prestigious volumes. Nova Res is also one of the three print shops officially recommended to postulators by the Vatican.
The postulator Silvia Correale also wanted an explanation, and requested an appointment with Fralleoni. The meeting was tense. She asked for the immediate unblocking of her account but in the process she gave away some telling insider details of what was really going on inside the Congregation for the Causes of Saints under the leadership of Cardinal Amato. Fralleoni wrote a summary of her remarks for Monsignor Vallejo Balda, in a confidential document to which I was given access:
The account in her name holds about ten thousand euros and she says she has no other bank accounts in Italy; therefore this is her sole source of income. She asks if it would be possible to unblock it, and says that she knows and has worked with the Pope and that he knows and respects her … The most interesting item to emerge from our conversation is the fact that the Congregation for Saints HAS STILL NOT NOTIFIED ANYONE AND HAS NOT REQUESTED FROM ANY OF THE POSTULANTS THEIR FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FROM THE PAST FIVE YEARS!!! In practice, they’re doing nothing. This is also serious because, while speaking with the postulator Silvia Correale, I realized that the balance sheets don’t exist … Maybe the Prefect [Amato], who turned 75 in June, is waiting to pass the problem on to someone else … Let me know whether you think we should proceed to unblock this single account. The postulator seemed honest and sincere to me. I think we could use her in the future to receive more interesting information about how the causes are handled. In the meantime the various other consultants et alia who should be getting money from the causes are starting to get angry … The postulator says that some time ago she had handed in a financial statement but the people at the Congregation did not want to put their seal on it. After that she said she didn’t do them anymore and that … to do them now would take months.
Monsignor Vallejo Balda was shocked:
This is all extremely serious, what do you mean there are no balance sheets? This woman is handling more than 100 causes … how is it possible? This is one of the problems. We have nothing to say about her personal bank account but how is it possible that she has one at IOR [?] … I don’t trust her … Let’s talk about this tomorrow.
Fralleoni backtracked immediately regarding the woman’s IOR account:
The fact of having an account at IOR is a delicate matter. The postulator brought up the question of her rights as a person who had worked continuously for the Holy See and was thus similar to an employee. And for her work she is paid about 4,000 euros a month (more than I get…). Therefore I will have to study carefully the rules and regulations of the Congregation to assess the situation.
In December 2013, COSEA gave instructions to unblock 114 of the 409 accounts. Ambrosi’s money would remain frozen for a long time. He would receive a monthly sum that was sufficient for him and his loved ones to live on. Meanwhile, suggestions arrived from the consultancy firm on how to lend greater transparency to the financial activities of the Congregation and of the procedures for causes. But there were still pockets of resistance, and even standard accounting practices are still not being applied today. In other words, there seems to have been no improvement in the situation.
The Freemasons Could Infiltrate the Reforms
Oversight of the accounting practices of the Causes was creating irritation and discontent within the Curia. In early September 2013, the Catholic reporter Antonio Socchi was slipped a copy of the fiery letter that Zahra had sent to Cardinal Versaldi on August 3, asking him to freeze the accounts. A copy of the letter ended up being published in the September 6 issue of the newspaper Libero, which dedicated two pages to the story.
Who leaked the documents to the press? The goal was to discredit the security and confidentiality of the COSEA members. Francis feared unpleasant surprises, so he asked his personal secretary, Alfred Xuereb, also from Malta, to have a private talk with Zahra. Their conversation was very tense. Zahra realized that the Pontiff was “very worried.” Francis cared deeply about the commission’s investigation, and he understood all too well that without an in-depth picture of the financial situation he would have to abandon his plans for a complete overhaul of the Vatican.
But the Pope’s support was still unwavering. On the morning of Saturday, September 14, he welcomed all the members of the Commission to the Holy Mass that he was celebrating in the Santa Marta chapel. It was the day of the second session of COSEA. The suggestion that they attend the Mass had been made by Don Abbondi, the office head of the Prefecture, who was still not certain the invitation would be approved.
Only four days before the Mass, at the last minute, Monsignor Xuereb gave the go-ahead for the Commission to attend. The religious service that is held at the personal residence of the Pope is always very private and reserved to only a few people. By inviting them, Francis was confirming the esteem he held for the COSEA members as well as his attention to their work. This was a signal that encouraged Zahra, on the following Monday, September 16, to send the Pope two confidential letters. The first was a quick briefing on the investigations under way. The second letter was more delicate. He took up the issue of the leaked documents. The explicit purpose was to reassure Francis by pointing to a possible security flaw:
Your Holiness,
I refer to the concerns you have expressed over questions relative to the confidentiality and security of documents. I wish to assure you that we are taking all the necessary precautions appropriate to the utmost secrecy and security regarding the circulation of documents, including a dedicated network for cellular telephones, and a dedicated server for the exchange of emails and the use of passwords. The unfortunate incident of having a signed letter … being published in Libero on September 6 may be due to the fact that these letters were with every good intention attached to a letter forwarded by Cardinal Amato to all the postulators for the causes of saints scattered throughout the world. This increased the risk of this document spreading. Begging your forgiveness for having given any cause for concern, we are further tightening our security measures on the letters sent by our Commission, reminding the recipients of their utmost confidentiality.
Your obedient servant, Zahra
The most immediate countermeasure was the decision to establish a communication task force, taken at the meeting of October 12, 2013. The task force had three ambitious goals.20 The first was to manage COSEA’s relations with the media—whose activity they hoped would remain dormant, given the delicacy of the subject matter. The second was to “analyze in depth how the Vatican communications system is currently structured,” in order to shake it up radically, given the ongoing leaks to the press and the more critical stance international media was taking to the Holy See in the wake of the Vatileaks scandal (the moniker given to the leaking of confidential documents by me, and the basis for my previous book, His Holiness). Finally, the task force had “to be able to provide the Holy Father with the most appropriate recommendations to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of Vatican communications, internally and externally.”
The media was one of the most delicate fronts to manage. The “enemies” were flocking in large numbers, at least according to the surprising revelations of another member of COSEA, the Frenchman Jean Videlain-Sevestre, disclosed in a grave email that he had sent to his colleagues and to the Pope’s confidants one month earlier:
Our actions will highlight the financial and administrative shortcomings that the enemies of the Church obviously wish to see. I am speaking of some governments, some politicians and much of the media. For example, we must at all costs prevent the free masons from circumventing or even infiltrating our plans of action.
As Sevestre so clearly indicated, the members of the Commission felt embattled. Not only did he fear internal resistance to the reforms of Francis, which were already emerging forcefully, he also feared the Freemasons. They always tracked the financial activities of the Vatican with close attention and sometimes open hostility: the “brotherhood of the masons” might even “infiltrate”—as the Frenchman put it—the Commission’s operative plans, in order to manipulate their execution and impede the achievement of their goals.
Similar fears were emerging during the selection of advisors and experts to help the Commission in the conduct of its investigation. After Sevestre met with the renowned consultant Roland Berger in Paris on September 14, 2013, Berger advanced his own candidature, but added some concerns that were bothering him:
We wish first of all to reconfirm our deep attachment to the Catholic Church … You can be certain of the utmost discretion of the signatories of this letter, of their Catholic faith, of their not belonging to organizations that are adverse to the Catholic Church, whether Masonic or of another nature.
These were the first signs of resistance and acts of sabotage that would increasingly hinder the investigation by COSEA. The investigation into the saints’ factory would last for months, but the effect of Francis’s reform on that Congregation is still unclear today.