Financial scandals at the Vatican sometime take on an almost surreal quality. Case in point:
Here are the major figures and developments in the ongoing story of the IDI hospital:
IDI hospital – The Istituto Dermopatico dell’Immacolata (IDI), an Italian dermatological hospital. After a series of embezzlement scandals drove the hospital into bankruptcy, it was purchased by a for-profit partnership created between the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and the religious order that had owned and managed the hospital.
IOR – The Vatican’s commercial bank, also known as the Institute for Religious Works, or the Vatican Bank. In 2015, the IOR rejected a request for a 50 million euro loan to a for-profit partnership created between the Vatican Secretariat of State and a religious order with the intention of purchasing the bankrupt IDI hospital. IOR board members determined that the hospital would never be able to repay the loan.
APSA – The Vatican’s central bank, similar to a federal reserve. Under 2012 European regulatory agreements, APSA cannot make commercial loans. However, after the IOR in 2015 rejected a 50 million euro loan request to purchase the bankrupt IDI hospital, APSA approved the loan, raising questions of whether it violated European regulations in doing so. Officials with the Vatican Secretary of State then asked the U.S.-based Papal Foundation for a grant to help remove the loan from APSA’s books. That grant fell through, and APSA has now reportedly written off most of the loan.
Papal Foundation – A U.S.-based group that gives grants to causes endorsed by the pope, often in developing nations and typically of $300,000 or less. The Papal Foundation was asked in June 2017 for a $25 million grant to help with a temporary cash shortage at the IDI hospital. The funding was initially approved, with cardinal board members who supported the grant outnumbering lay board members who opposed it. However, some lay board members continued to object to the grant, questioning whether it was actually intended to cover the bad APSA loan. Amid increased scrutiny, the grant collapsed. $13 million of the grant has already been paid, which the Vatican Secretary of State now says is being treated as a loan that will be repaid through discounts against future grant requests.
Cardinal Angelo Becciu – Formerly the number two official at the Vatican Secretariat of State. Multiple Vatican sources have told CNA that Becciu, along with Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, was key in organizing the effort to acquire the IDI hospital and to pressure the Papal Foundation into approving a $25 million grant to help offset the potentially illicit APSA loan, removing it from the books. Becciu denies any involvement, saying he had lost interest in the project by the time of the Papal Foundation grant.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin – Vatican Secretary of State. Parolin told CNA that he was responsible for arranging the 2014 loan of 50 million euros from APSA, the Vatican’s central bank, to partially fund the purchase of the bankrupt IDI hospital. He said the arrangement was “carried out with fair intentions and honest means,” although the loan appears to violate 2012 regulations prohibiting APSA from making commercial loans. He also said that he had devised a plan, along with Cardinal Donald Wuerl, to ask the U.S.-based Papal Foundation for the money to cover APSA’s bad loan.
Theodore McCarrick – Former cardinal who has now been laicized for sexually abusing minors. McCarrick met with the secretary of APSA in July 2017. He later pressured lay board members of the Papal Foundation to support the grant, suggesting that questioning the Vatican funding request was inappropriate and would challenge the integrity of the foundation itself.
Cardinal George Pell – Former head of the Prefecture for the Economy, charged with overseeing the Vatican’s financial accountability. In this role, Pell reportedly objected to the APSA loan to buy the IDI hospital. After lobbying from Becciu, Pope Francis withdrew oversight authority of APSA from Pell’s office in 2015.
Go here to read the rest. Note that the money grafted from the Papal Foundation is going to be repaid by the Vatican giving a discount for future moneys they ask for. PopeWatch suspects that the Mafia has more honest and transparent financial management than the Vatican.
You simply can’t trust these guys. Nothing is beneath them.
On another note…where is Fr George Rutler?
The problem with scandals (plural) is that one becomes shock- immune to their evil when they become the normal expectation of an entity–Catholic Church included.
This is all crazy. The Vatican’s sovereignty is a diplomatic courtesy. They can bloody well rely on Italy’s currency and Italy’s network of commercial banks and credit unions. While we’re at it, institutional savings and investments can be placed in impersonal vehicles and supervised by laymen schooled in that trade. There’s no good reason for clergymen and clergymen’s minions to be engaged in business enterprises which require active management (bar simple enterprises incorporated into the ora et labora of a monastic house).
Every diocese and order requires a support staff. The Church is far to large and far flung for the Holy See to provide such functions to any entity but itself. The Vatican is the locus for the Holy See’s own support staff functions, as well as certain line functions (maintenance of the Holy See’s architectural treasures, artistic treasures, archives, libraries, and allied research centers; operation of certain ecclesiastical courts and auditing agencies; supervision of the appointment of bishops and superiors; and provision of chancery and chamber services to the Pope himself). The Church still has ample manpower among the clergy, religious, and laity. It doesn’t need centrally directed philanthropies. And it can and should minimize the number of clergy and religious employed by the Holy See (just as diocesan chanceries should employ few clergy and religious – ideally just the vocations promoter, the tribunal, and an official charged with performance audits).
And I’d dearly love it if the next Pope stayed home and kept his own counsel bar cleaning up the mess derived from Frankie’s logorhea. We benefit from a Pope who knows how to take care of business.
/ rant off.
What is the Latin phrase for “money laundering?”
What is the Latin phrase for “money laundering?”
Good point.
@Art Deco:
Ablutio pecuniae