The Theft of COSEA’s Secret Files
It is Sunday, March 30, 2014. Daybreak is just a few hours away and St. Peter’s Square is still deserted. In one of the most closely guarded areas of the world, something unpredictable happens in the wee hours of the night. Thieves, against all odds, defy security and break into the pontifical palaces.
The deepest silence reigned over the Palace of the Congregations, in Pius XIII Square, directly opposite the colonnade designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The gatehouse by Colonnade 3 was locked. Gaspare, the trusted Sicilian custodian, had gone home for the weekend, like the other employees and the cleaning personnel. With the exception of a 353-square-meter home, the residence of Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, and a one-bedroom apartment rented to a peaceful retiree, the four-story building was used entirely for store and office space, including the office of the Congregation for the Clergy, the Congregation for Catholic Life, and the Congregation for the Holy Life. The 781 square meters on the fourth and last floor of stairway D were reserved entirely for the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See, the reference point for the inspections Francis had initiated into the Roman Curia. Here the auditors worked elbow to elbow with the COSEA members. This was where most of the confidential documents were kept. This was where the Coordinator of the Commission, Secretary of the Prefecture Vallejo Balda, had his office. It was the symbolic center of Francis’s revolution.
The thieves entered the building and the offices of the various congregations using a blowtorch. They went from floor to floor, cracking open every safe they found and stealing the money inside. In general they found not more than a few hundred euros per office. The Congregations and the Prefecture only kept enough money on hand for petty cash. These sums were quite modest, disproportionate to the type of action that was under way. The thieves behaved like professionals. They knew where the safes were located, knew how to open them in the least time possible, and knew how to easily force any door they might come across.
It is what the thieves would do immediately after the break-in that the investigators would find unusual and surprising—a deliberate decision that seems to provide the correct key for interpreting this disturbing nocturnal intrusion.
Once the burglars had entered the offices of the Prefecture, they did not limit themselves to identifying the safe, opening it, and taking the money. They also broke into the room that had several armored lockers. They pinpointed one locker in particular and forced it open. While from the outside the lockers looked identical, the criminals knew exactly which one to open. In opening the heavy armored doors they found no money or precious assets but confidential documents, kept in order in just a few dozen files.
This was not just any crime. In an unprecedented action, the burglars made off with part of the secret archives of the COSEA Pontifical Commission. This was a serious act that risked compromising the Commission’s efforts. What did the files of the Pope’s inspectors have to do with the few hundred euros in the various safes?
The intrusion was discovered the next day. The Vatican gendarmerie went into action and the Italian police forces were notified. In a fairly unique occurrence in the world, police forces from two countries launched a joint investigation. The building where the burglary had taken place belonged to an extraterritorial property indicated in the Lateran Pacts. Not only did the Palace belong to the Holy See, but—although it was located right outside the Leonine Walls—it was considered for all intents and purposes a part of the Vatican City. The interior of the property is within Vatican territory and thus the investigation was the province of the gendarmerie. Outside, on the adjacent streets, the Italian investigators were in charge. They checked dozens of videos captured by surveillance cameras in the neighborhood. The police tried to reconstruct the chain of events. The burglars—there were two or three of them—may have entered through the main door, but there was another theory that the investigators entertained at first: the intruders might have come in through the basement, having reached the Palace of the Congregations through one of the many tunnels that connect the buildings of the Vatican. While the theory sounded bizarre, it was in fact plausible. From the cellar of this building you could reach various destinations: the offices of the twin building, where other congregations had their headquarters, or the offices of the IOR, or even the Apostolic Palace and, on the other side, Castel Sant’Angelo. It was maze of tunnels, open-air corridors, covered and uncovered passageways, stairways and elevators (mostly dating back to the world wars in the first half of the twentieth century) that, for someone who knew them well, made it easy to move around sight unseen. It was a parallel world that was an apt metaphor for the Apostolic See, divided as it was between what takes place on the surface and is spread through official communiqués, and that which is consummated in secret rooms. It is an underground world that runs underneath the streets of Rome, upon which thousands of unwitting tourists and pilgrims tread every day. And it was no coincidence that the IOR—the impenetrable bank of the popes—had a storage area with confidential archives in the basement of the Palace of the Congregations, a fact known to very few.
When the investigators went down to the basements, however, they found everything in order, starting with the many dark limousines of the various embassies to the Holy See parked in the garage. The storage areas of the Congregations and of the IOR had not been touched. The corridor that leads to the Apostolic Palace was closed. It would have been difficult for the burglars to go through a tunnel to reach the storage area: the place looked impenetrable, and was known to be under surveillance by many security cameras. At this point, the most realistic theory was that the intruders had entered through one of the main doors, on the side that faces Pius XII Square. But the lock on the door was working and showed no signs of tampering. Did this mean that the thieves might have had the keys? There was no other explanation. This doorway was the obvious entry point, since it was near the staircase leading down to the storage room where the confidential files were kept.
At the Vatican, news of the burglary spread quickly and created unrest and dismay. The members of the Commission were of course among the first to be informed. They were surprised, shocked, and frightened. Zahra was in London on a business trip. He was on the phone all day with his trusted men to hear every development of the investigation. By Monday afternoon, among the various theories raised by the police, the most credible seemed to be a targeted burglary. No one thought it was possible that all those safes had been broken into only to steal a few hundred euros. Who would be so clueless and stupid as to commit a burglary in one of the most guarded places in the world for such meager loot? The true objective—some of the investigators thought—was the papers. The other items stolen looked more like a setup to throw the investigators off the scent.
And why would anyone want to steal the documents? Someone might have been interested in knowing their contents in order to map the works of the Commission—or maybe the objective was to remove some of them to slow down the works of the men closest to the Bishop of Rome? The burglars were certainly well informed. They knew the place perfectly, had the keys to open the doors, and had brought along the right equipment. And of course, they knew exactly which armored locker to force.
There was yet another theory, the worst of those being explored by the investigators, but one which would gradually become more plausible: the burglary might have been a criminal message, a thinly veiled warning to those who were bringing change. As if to say, between the lines, “We know where you keep your archive. We can go there when we want. We know and we can find everything.”
From that day on, the psychological pressures on the COSEA commissioners increased. They felt increasingly vulnerable and exposed. The intimidation theory would receive preliminary confirmation a few weeks later by the leaders of the Holy See.
Both Francis and Cardinal George Pell, who a few weeks earlier had become head of the Secretariat of the Economy (the new structure that the Pope wanted and that will be described in the following chapters) received the news of the burglary with the same interpretation: the action should be understood as a warning to those who were carrying out the most delicate inquiries; to those who were offering the Pontiff the tools for revolutionizing the Curia. Jorge—as the eight hundred priests of the Buenos Aires diocese called him when Francis was still the Archbishop of the Argentine capital and as his friends and closest prelates still call him—has a mild and unflappable character, but he had never expected a move like this.
Sindona’s Letter to Threaten Francis
This was not an isolated episode. In those same days, troubling information crossed the desk of Father Mark Withoos of Melbourne, the personal secretary of Cardinal Pell, regarding strange movements by people around the Domus Australia, home of the powerful cardinal who now headed the Vatican Economy. It seemed that Pell was being followed, but it was hard to know why. Father Withoos reported the news to his superior, who urged him to be cautious.
A few days later, on April 10, 2014, an unsigned letter arrived in the Prefecture from London: a single sheet of green paper with eleven lines handwritten in cursive. The first sentence quoted the motto of Anonymous, the powerful online hacker community that stages spectacular actions to denounce corruption and financial shenanigans throughout the world. “We do not forgive, we do not forget. Wait for us!” The letter began with the sentence, “The outsiders are coming in from the outside … Pass this [message] to the Pope and to all the interested parties: the game is up.”
Though the letter was hard to interpret and could have been a prank, after the burglary the Vatican was on high alert. The sentence “The outsiders are coming in from the outside” seemed to refer to the recent break-in at the Palace of the Congregations. The letter was forwarded to the personal secretary of the Pope, Alfred Xuareb, whom Francis had appointed Secretary General of the Secretariat for the Economy and his representative for dealings with COSEA. Xuareb had a talk with Withoos. Nothing like this had arrived in recent years, but the two men, refusing to be intimidated, downplayed the importance of the letter. “We have nothing to hide. We’re not going to play the game of someone who wants to frighten us. Our job is to help Francis.” Their approach was commendable, but the individuals operating in the shadows had a few more surprises up their sleeves. The war had just begun.
These were festive days at the Vatican. April 26 was the eve of the Sunday of Divine Mercy, with the Holy Mass scheduled to take place at ten A.M. in St. Peter’s Square for the beatification of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims were expected, and significant security measures were taken. Early in the morning, someone had left a sealed parcel in the mailbox of the Prefecture. The package had no address and no return address. When the clerks opened it they found papers that they recognized immediately as some of the documents that had been stolen from the armored locker one month earlier.
The burglars had chosen to return a set of confidential papers dating back to 1970, regarding business relations between the Vatican, Umberto Ortolani (the corrupt middleman for the Freemasons), and the banker Michele Sindona. There were several letters from Sindona to the ecclesiastical hierarchs of the era, names that would be the source of major embarrassment for the Holy See. Sindona, in particular, was closely tied to the most powerful Mafia bosses active in the United States in the 1960s—from Vito Genovese to Joe Adonis to John Gambino. Together with Monsignor Casimir Marcinkus and the banker Roberto Calvi, Sindona had been the protagonist of one of the worst moments in the Vatican finances. Like Calvi, he also died in mysterious circumstances. Calvi was found hanging underneath the Blackfriars Bridge in London. Sindona was found dead in his prison cell after drinking coffee laced with cyanide, a few days after being sentenced to life imprisonment for having ordered the murder of the lawyer Giorgio Ambrosoli, who had been commissioned to liquidate one of Sindona’s banks. For years, the investigators had claimed that both deaths were the result of suicide. Not until six years after his death was it discovered that Calvi had been murdered, but his accused murderers were all found not guilty in a series of trials. In the parcel that arrived in the Prefecture there was also an exchange of letters between Monsignor Giovanni Benelli, at the time the Substitute of the Secretary of State, and Cardinal Sergio Guerri, President of the Commission for the State of the Vatican City, who had written to Sindona. The correspondence made clear that Sindona was to feel at home at the Vatican, thanks in part to a network of relations and agreements drafted over the years. Sindona even received mail at the Holy See, with letters addressed to “Mr. Michele Sindona, c/o Pope Paul VI, The Vatican, Rome (Italy).” Sindona had also conducted business on behalf of the Vatican worth millions of the old lira, involving the transfer of blocks of shares in important companies, such as the shares that APSA held in the Smalterie Genovesi. (There was also the dramatic story of the huge hole in the finances of the Pantanella Company, into which the Holy See had made a no-return investment for the equivalent of 60 million euros in 1968 and 1969 which it continued to recapitalize, in the desperate hopes of saving a company that clearly had no future.)
In the Vatican, questions were raised, but not any alarms, about how to interpret this delivery, who might have made it, and what message it was meant to send.
The situation became more and more complicated. By that point—as Zahra put it in a few choice words spoken in a conversation with friends—“war had been declared.” Cardinal Pell tried to send reassuring messages to show that he was not intimidated. The perfect occasion presented itself a few weeks later. In an interview, Pell referred explicitly to the controversial characters who had been resuscitated:
This change was requested from the cardinals at the Congregations that preceded the Conclave. One year ago the Cardinals said “Enough.” Enough with these scandals … Proceed with perseverance. Nunc coepimus. We have just begun. We will go forward. We still need to improve. But one thing is certain: enough with Calvi and Sindona, enough of surprises that we learn in the newspapers … We need financial transparency, professionalism and honesty.1
Some observers in the Curia thought Pell’s reference to Sindona and Calvi was extemporaneous, maybe because they did not know the story of the mysterious parcel of letters from the Sicilian banker that had just been delivered to the Prefecture. To avoid media attention and possible resulting scandals, the occurrence was not made public, in keeping with most of the controversial events that take place within the holy palaces. The only element of the whole affair that filtered out was the news of the mysterious nighttime burglary in the Palace of the Congregations. The story of the parcel would have to remain top secret: otherwise Sindona’s letters might attract the uncontrollable attention of the media.
To understand what actually triggered this no-holds-barred war, we need to take a step back and relate what happened only a few months earlier, just as the Commission’s investigations were going full steam ahead and to touch on every corner of the Curia.
These were critical weeks that would determine a definitive split between the senior representatives of the Vatican. In addition to the COSEA investigations, starting in the fall of 2013 there were also concrete initiatives to reform the Vatican state and change its dicasteries, the rules and regulations that govern them, and indicate new roles, responsibilities, and hierarchies. At some point the “evangelical revolution” of the Curia driven by Francis—to repeat the words of his Uruguayan friend Guzmán Carriquiry Lecour—would risk implosion.2 There was too much tension, and too many situations that inflame that small world—a world that by the will of the Gospel and of Francis should be a world of peace, mercy, and poverty but instead risked growing further and further away from its pastoral and theological dictates.
Bertone Makes a Noisy Exit
Day after day, in the fall of 2013, the extent of the reforms became clearer to everyone. Francis and his men were trying to make the move from analysis to action. Once the most compromised situations came into focus, the culprits were held accountable and dozens of wayward laypersons, bishops, and cardinals were quickly dismissed. The Pope did not act with stealth. He publicized the guidelines of his pontificate, inviting the involvement of everyone, inside and outside the walls.
Francis sought to be inclusive, collecting in the new power centers the souls of every member of the Curia from the Focolare movement to Opus Dei, from ex-Bertone loyalists to diplomats and the representatives of the episcopates of the two Americas, but he did not always succeed. The pilgrims, parishes, and rank-and-file Catholics were enthusiastic. In the Vatican, however, the Pope’s moves often provoked the opposite reaction. Every day the ranks of the malcontent grew by a few new members, religious people who were frustrated or trying to delay a change they feared.
Francis’s opponents became more numerous and alarmed when, over a ten-day period in late September 2013, the Pope granted two long interviews that stunned the Curia. The first was granted to the Jesuit priest Antonio Spadaro, the respected editor-in-chief of the prestigious magazine La Civiltà Cattolica:
The dicasteries of the Roman Curia are at the service of the Pope and the bishops. They must help both the particular churches and the bishops’ conferences. They are instruments of help … The Roman congregations are mediators; they are not middlemen or managers. How are we treating the people of God? I dream of a church that is mother and shepherdess … God is greater than sin. The structural and organizational reforms are secondary—that is, they come afterward. The first reform must be the attitude. The ministers of the Gospel must be people who can warm the hearts of the people, who walk through the dark night with them, who know how to dialogue and to descend themselves into their people’s night, into the darkness, but without getting lost. The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.3
A few days later the Bishop of Rome returned to the same subject. This time he chose an Italian intellectual, an atheist, Eugenio Scalfari, founder of the daily newspaper la Repubblica. In this interview he was even clearer:
Heads of the Church have often been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers. The court is the leprosy of the papacy. There are sometimes courtiers in the Curia, but the Curia as a whole is another thing … The Curia is Vatican-centric. It sees and looks after the interests of the Vatican, which are still, for the most part, temporal interests. I do not share this view and I’ll do everything I can to change it … I have decided as the first thing to appoint a group of eight cardinals as my advisors. Not courtiers but wise persons who share my same sentiments. This is the beginning of a Church with an organization that is not only vertical but also horizontal.4
Francis gave a harsh direct analysis of all those who had abused their power for decades. But passing from words to deeds would not be easy. In the holy palaces the two interviews became the main subject of discussion among the cardinals. Almost no one had expected such sharp words. It was the first time that a pope had expressed such a firm attitude, a clear sign that his revolution was meant to be much more than empty promises. This time the Curia really did have to change. Francis showed himself to be authoritative but not authoritarian. His decisiveness was always tempered by his kind manners.
Bergoglio’s attitude and his groundbreaking public statements made his closest collaborators even more enthusiastic about participating in the change. In particular, the men who had pushed for greater transparency, and been ignored for years, were now ready to stake everything on Francis. They included Monsignor Viganò who, from the nunciature in Washington, started to engage in a more intense dialogue with the monsignors and priests at the Secretariat of State as well as with various laypeople who held important roles within the administrative bodies of the Holy See.
And there was also Nigel Baker, the Ambassador of Great Britain to the Holy See, who on October 3, 2013, sent Peter Bryan Wells, the Assessor for General Affairs of the Secretariat of State, a “personal and confidential” missive. Baker attached to the letter a confidential five-page memo, signed by Thomas Stonor, 7th Baron Camoys, an English politician and descendant of King Charles II of England. For thirty-five years Stonor had been a prominent banker on the board of directors of some of Europe’s most important credit institutions, including Barclays and Amex. Ltd. Stonor wanted to forward to the upper echelons of the Holy See a document he considered decisive, a proposal articulating a precise, detailed reform of the Vatican economies.
The surprising thing was the date of the proposal: June 22, 2004. This meant that nine years earlier the banker had submitted the memo to Cardinals Nicora and Bertone, and that his ideas had been ignored. Stonor, in addition to being an expert on financial issues, had also been a close collaborator of the Church as an advisor to APSA. By virtue of this role, and after consulting Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, he had sent the memorandum to the top dogs of the Holy See. Its contents were still relevant, which is why the British baron was now going back on the attack through the mediation of the British ambassador:
The historic structure, with regard to the financial management of the resources of the Holy See, is not only inappropriate for the 21st century but also dangerous to the resources of the Holy See and potentially to its reputation … It is dangerous because of the risks due to involvement of money laundering (through the IOR) or simply the mismanagement of the financial activities and/or annual budget. After the Calvi affair any event related to the points discussed previously would in all likelihood damage the reputation of the Holy See. During the sporadic meetings with the APSA advisors, I mentioned some of these concerns, but in vain: perhaps I did not explain myself clearly enough … At APSA I notice a lack of decision-making power, which is understandable as a consequence of the Calvi affair … I ask myself quite seriously whether the Holy See really needs an entity like the IOR. All of its services could be provided by other banks and with greater security … in particular, reference is made to the very serious risk of becoming involved in episodes of money laundering.
The document was read and interpreted by the men closest to Francis as further proof of the fact that many at the Apostolic See knew how critical things were but had no intention of changing their approach—starting, perhaps, with the Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, whose term was set to expire in a few days. The handover ceremony from Bertone to his successor, Archbishop Pietro Parolin, the Apostolic Nuncio to Caracas, was on the calendar for mid-October.
The audience had already been scheduled, but something unexpected arose. Parolin was unable to attend because he had to undergo minor surgery. The appointment could have been postponed, but Francis seemed not to want the Secretary to be in power even one day longer. So rather than a handover ceremony there was a tense farewell meeting, with clichéd expressions of gratitude.5 Bertone made use of the occasion to try to rehabilitate himself with the new Pope, describing the “crows” and “snakes” in the Holy See, as he would often repeat to the few loyalists he had left and in public settings.6 But it was too late.
For some time, the powerful secretary chosen by Ratzinger was more isolated and less influential. “In the first six months of the pontificate”—one prelate let slip in a conversation with some clerics at the end of the ceremony—“the Pope has acted as if Bertone didn’t exist.” In fact, the Pontiff had gone through the first six months of his pontificate without a Secretary of State. Bertone had never won his trust. This was intimated by Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, a loyalist of Jorge Bergoglio and a maverick Salesian, the first cardinal in history from Honduras and the coordinator of the so-called C8, the Council of Eight Cardinals chosen by the Holy Father to help him in guiding the Universal Church.
On the Canadian television program “Salt and Light,” Maradiaga revealed that he already knew about the appointment of Parolin on March 17, during a conversation with the Pope only four days after his election.
Bergoglio had broken every record in changing his top collaborator. His predecessor Benedict XVI, by contrast, had waited fourteen months before appointing Bertone to replace then Secretary Angelo Sodano.
Fears of the Revolution: Less Power to the Cardinals in the Curia, More Room for Laypeople
In the holy palaces Francis’s enemies were increasingly concerned by the sharply political slant that the two pontifical commissions were taking. COSEA and the Commission on the IOR were in fact working on two different fronts. The findings of COSEA were well known: throughout its analysis of the accounts of the pope’s bank and the other administrative bodies of the Holy See, it identified the inertia, incompetence, and abuse described in previous chapters.
Yet there was another battlefield that was less known. The COSEA commissioners had received a specific new request from the eight cardinals of the C8: don’t only look for problems and crisis areas, propose clear solutions, give us advice on how to revolutionize the administration and the whole organization of the state. It was absolutely necessary to redefine once and for all the internal power structure of the Vatican.
A meeting of the C8 in Rome was set for December 2013. To prepare for this appointment, the COSEA members drafted and proposed a strategy to change the Church from the ground up. First there needed to be a readjustment of the balance between temporal and religious power. The laypeople had to take on greater importance in the economic and administrative areas: this was a revolutionary suggestion for an absolute monarchy whose king is a religious person.
The powerful lobbies and networks that had always ruled at the Vatican could not accept this new direction; if the project were to take effect—so argued the many “courtiers,” to use Francis’s expression—it would be the end.
It was October 2013. The four draft pages of the report of that meeting, which I was able to examine, deserve to be read in their entirety. One gets the impression the members of COSEA have reached the point of no return. Francis’s loyalists had no intention of easing the pressure. As the minutes from the meeting attest, the first person to take the floor was George Yeo, the only member of the Commission with experience as a politician, having served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Singapore. Yeo envisioned a sharp separation between economic power and political-religious power:
The decisions of the Holy See should be independent from the composition of the Colleges of Cardinals. It is difficult for the Holy See’s function to combine those of a Minister of Foreign Affairs and a Prime Minister. We need a Minister of Finance that has full powers and that manages the budget. The Prefecture for Economic Affairs could be transformed into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in such a way that all the other congregations would have to contribute to the budget and stick to its demands and projections. The Ministry of Finance should have responsibility for the budget. The Church is missionary and therefore trans-border, and the Ministry of Finance has to oversee its finances. Through the establishment of the Ministry of Finance, the role of function of APSA would be redefined.
He then addressed the question of whether APSA would continue to be the central bank:
The pre-existing agreements that, as the central bank, it currently has with the Fed, the Bank of England, and the German Bundesbank, should be maintained because it would be difficult to renegotiate them.
On the issue of whether the Governorate should be run by different figures than the present, the men on the Commission felt that the Holy Father would have to be directly involved:
The Governorate [is another question]. These items should be discussed with the Holy Father: the government of the City with its accounts and its budgets; self-sustenance and the sources of financing of the Ministry of Finance; the uselessness of the cardinals and the other members of the clergy. And other obvious questions such as: security, transparency and good governance [also with regard to] the Vatican museums, [which should be] an autonomous entity.
The meeting helped to align the works of the Commission with the indications that the C8 cardinals had provided after discussing them with Francis. The minutes of the meeting place us at the heart of the revolution, and illustrate clearly the chain of command: the Pope, after consulting them, gave the guidelines to the eight cardinals, who in turn forwarded instructions and priorities to the members of COSEA. And they were briefed by their coordinator, Monsignor Vallejo Balda, who had just received indications about the need for a radical reshaping of the central power in its current formation.
The Curia should be governed by a bishop and not a cardinal, with the power not to “exercise authority” over the Congregations but simply to coordinate their work. The title “Secretary of State” should be changed, and in the future referred to as “Papal Secretary.” The position would have even less power than it had under Paul VI, considering that it was especially during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI that “the fact that the Secretary of State had to give his approval to every question proved to be an obstacle.” For Vallejo Balda, “pontifical councils should be abolished, because among the various functions [of the Secretary of State], the only truly valid one is coordination of the various bishops’ conferences.” In the field of culture, for example, “Rome cannot spread teachings to influence the rest of the world. In this way the Curia will be more agile and manageable.”
The central theme of the meeting is captured in another passage regarding the need to reassess the importance of laypeople with respect to cardinals. This was the strategic policy outlined by COSEA and made available to the C8 cardinals:
There should not only be cardinals at the head of the administrative bodies: purely administrative organizations like APSA do not require a cardinal. The councils of cardinals will continue to exist. The Governorate can return to its former configuration as a governor, comparable to a mayor, with an assembly of councilors.7
Jean Videlain-Sevestre was more prudent, seeking a path that did not break too sharply with the past and that might receive the consensus of the cardinals themselves. He knew that it would be difficult for the reform to succeed otherwise:
We can see in practice what the problems and critical points are … [By resolving them] we will uproot the evil. We go to the roots of the dysfunction and we attain the consensus of the cardinals: they are experts in ecclesiastical life, not in economics. We have to recognize that we run the risk of proposing unrealistic solutions.8
In contrast to Sevestre, Jochen Messemer recommended a decisive, resolute approach:
It is useful to isolate the guiding principles of our reorganization proposal. We should advance 1–3 proposals. We should not be afraid. Our job is to propose solutions that we consider improvements. After that the Holy Father and the C8 will assess them and draw their own conclusions.
But it was not as simple as that. Monsignor Vallejo Baldo made this clear with crude realism: “The truth is that we need money to achieve financial freedom.” Without financial independence, in other words, the Curia would always be fragile and exposed to scandals.
Zahra would have the last word:
We must take into consideration the facts and the objectives mentioned by the advisors. The guiding principles, especially with regard to the laity. The priests should not be careerists. For some positions competent professionals rather than prelates would be more fitting.
After this confidential meeting of the Commission, the international advisors put into practice their recommendations and outlined the organizational chart of the new state that would serve the Church in the world, from the United States to Japan. One’s role in the ecclesiastical hierarchy would no longer be considered a form of “power” but of “service.”
On November 20, 2013, the Americans of Promontory offered the COSEA members an outline of the new state. Different variants of the organizational structure were proposed, depending on whether there was to be a Ministry of Finance, a central bank, or another type of institution. At the Vatican, a radical constitutional reform of the power arrangements was taking place, with some religious people taking on unprecedented temporal responsibilities.
When these prospects reached the ears of the cardinals in the Curia, the shock could not have been more absolute. Signals, warnings, and actions began that in some cases gave rise to illegal behavior. Some people were ready to do anything to stop the revolution that had arrived in St. Peter’s Square from a far-flung corner of the world. The reaction of those adverse to change, which until now had been unorganized, reliant on individual resistance, started to escalate into a full-fledged war between two opposing armies.