The Apostle Paul said that the love of money is the root of many evils. Certainly money throughout the history of the Church has proven troublesome, as clerics often seem to demonstrate an inability to manage funds without massive waste and fraud occurring on a regular basis. Pope Francis tasked Cardinal Pell with the onerous duty of cleaning up this mess, and this job makes the fabled cleaning of the Augean stables by Hercules child’s play by comparison. Sandro Magister at his blog Chiesa gives us the gritty details:
And yet there is no agreement between these two.
The pope is watching, he is listening, and no one knows where he is heading to go.
Go here to read the rest. Global businesses with annual receipts as large as the Holy See routinely make budgets and stick to them without all this Sturm und Drang. If Pope Francis can truly reform the way the Vatican manages its funds he will deserve the thanks of all Catholics. However, PopeWatch is not sanguine. Pope Francis is fighting against fiscal mismanagement that goes back very far in the history of the Church. A story goes that during the reign of Pope Alexander VI a Jewish merchant told his Christian colleague that he was thinking of converting to Catholicism, but before doing so he was going to go to Rome and observe the Church in operation at its highest level. The Christian merchant was horrified, having some idea of the horrible corruption that flourished under the Borgia Pope. He next saw his friend a month later. The Jewish merchant announced that he was going to be baptized next Sunday. His friend cautiously asked if anything in Rome had disturbed him. Not at all the Jew responded, everything I saw in Rome convinced me to convert. I saw such fraud, mismanagement, folly and outright criminality that it is a wonder that the Church has not been bankrupt in a week. Yet it has endured for almost fifteen centuries. It must be from God!
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All that mammon that is in the possession of the Vatican is held in trust for all future generations, in join and common tenancy with all peoples for all time.
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Besides, mammon is very heavy.