Merchants in the Temple: Inside Pope Francis's Secret Battle Against Corruption in the Vatican

223 Pages·2015·1.26 MB·English

by  Gianluigi Nuzzi

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Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

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Chronology

2013

FEBRUARY 10
Pope Benedict XVI resigns from his office as the Bishop of
Rome. As of February 28, the Holy See enters a period of
sede vacante, when it administered by the College of
Cardinals.

MARCH 13
Jorge Mario Bergoglio is elected as the 266th Pope of the
Roman Catholic Church and chooses as his name Francis.

APRIL 13
Francis appoints a Commission of Cardinal for the reform
of the Roman Curia.

JUNE 24
The Pope establishes the Pontifical Commission for
Reference on the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR).

JUNE 27
The international auditors write to the Pope sub secreto
pontificio detailing the irregularities, inertia, and shady
areas in the finances of the Curia.

JULY 3
Francis stands before the hierarchy of the Church in a
confidential meeting and delivers a blistering speech on the
gravity of the financial situation and the impending risks.

AUGUST 2
The Pontifical Commission for Reference on the
Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See
(COSEA) begins its audit of the Vatican finances.

AUGUST 5
COSEA freezes four hundred bank accounts at the IOR.

OCTOBER
COSEA runs into mounting difficulties and does not

receive the information it has requested.

DECEMBER 19
Tensions rise over the COSEA audit. A pattern of
obstacles, silence, or denial is used to impede the activity
of Francis’s men.

2014

JANUARY 30
The Secretary of State delivers to COSEA a twenty-nine-
page file on the secret accounts.

FEBRUARY 18
The Cardinals learn of all the critical areas uncovered by
COSEA.

FEBRUARY 24
Francis appoints Cardinal George Pell as the first Prefect of
the Secretariat for the Economy.

MARCH 30
COSEA documents are stolen in the night when burglars
break into the safes and strong boxes in the Prefecture’s
archives.

JULY 8
Francis transfers responsibility for the ordinary section of
APSA to the Secretariat for the Economy.

2015

MARCH
Hidden microphones are discovered in the offices of the Holy See.

About This Book

The Wounds of the Vatican

It is the afternoon of September 12, 1978. Pope John Paul I, after only eighteen
days of his pontificate, discovers that a powerful Masonic lobby with 120
members is active within the Curia. The news is disconcerting. Rather than
abiding by the words of the Gospel, cardinals, bishops, and senior clerics are
beholden to the vows of the Brotherhood of Freemasons—an intolerable
situation. So on September 19, the new Pontiff starts to draft a plan for a radical
reform of the Curia.

In the late afternoon of September 28, John Paul summons the Secretary of

State, the powerful Cardinal Jean-Marie Villot, to inform him of the changes he
wishes to implement. He has prepared a list of senior cardinals to be dismissed.
At the top of the list are Paul Casimir Marcinkus, the Monsignor who directs the
IOR (short for Istituto per le Opere di Religione, the Institute for Religious
Works, often referred to as the Vatican bank), and his closest collaborators:
Luigi Mennini and Pellegrino de Strobel. Similar measures will be taken with
the Secretary of the IOR, Monsignor Donato De Bonis. These players are too
closely associated with the bankers Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi and as
such, they have to be dismissed. They will be asked to leave the Curia the very
next day.

Among the other prominent figures to be replaced are the Archbishop of

Chicago, Cardinal John Patrick Cody, and the Vicar of Rome, Cardinal Ugo
Poletti. Cardinal Villot himself is also slated to be leaving.

John Paul’s talk with the Secretary of State lasts for more than two hours,

until 7:30 P.M. The next day, at dawn, Sister Vincenza Taffarel finds the Pontiff’s
lifeless body in his bed. John Paul I has left his last speech on his desk: he was
supposed to deliver it to the Procurators of the Society of Jesus, as the Jesuit
Order is known, with whom he had an audience the next day, September 30.

*

It is July 3, 2013, the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle. As he does every
morning, Pope Francis wakes at dawn in Room 201, one of the few suites in

Casa Santa Marta, the guest house where he has chosen to live since his election
in March. He has refused to move into the sumptuous pontifical apartments,
breaking immediately with papal formality. The day seems to be proceeding
with absolute normality. In his homily during the celebration of the Mass in the
Santa Marta chapel, the Pope uses a powerful metaphor: “We find Jesus’s
wounds in carrying out works of mercy … Let us ask of St. Thomas the grace to
grant us the courage to enter into the wounds of Jesus with tenderness.”

After the Mass, he has a frugal breakfast. But this will be no ordinary day.

Almost four months have gone by since the Conclave that elected him. The time
has come to initiate the profound reform promised to Catholics throughout the
world.

This is also the start of a war. A war that is still being waged today behind

closed doors, in the secret rooms of the Vatican palaces. This book tells the story
of that war—through documents that have never before been made public—
offering proof of a gigantic, and seemingly relentless, malfeasance that the
Pontiff is challenging with singular courage and determination.

A meeting has been called to discuss the finances of the Holy See. It is a

confidential meeting attended, customarily, by the cardinals of the Council for
the Study of the Organizational and Economic Problems of the Holy See, and
chaired by the Secretary of State of the Vatican, Tarcisio Bertone. The Pope’s
presence is generally not required at this meeting, but Francis wants to be there.
He has something urgent to say to the Church hierarchy, which is assembled in
its entirety. At the meeting Francis will bring to light all the wounds of the
Vatican, signaling an unprecedented break between the old and the new
approach—a rupture whose consequences are still unpredictable.

This Investigation

A live recording was made of the Pope’s words during that meeting. By listening
to this recording, I became the first journalist ever to have access to what goes
on at an insiders’ meeting at the Vatican attended by the Pontiff. The
investigation begins with the more recent and undisclosed secrets of the Holy
See. I will follow the Stations of the Cross as they are contemplated in silence,
one at a time, by the Jesuit Pope from Argentina. This is a true battle between
good and evil, in which the Pope’s men are lined up on one side, while on the
other are his enemies, the defenders of the status quo, adverse to any and all
change.

Seated around the table with Francis are the fifteen cardinals of the Council.

Also in attendance are the leaders of the departments that control the finances of
the Holy See: the Administrazione del patrimonio della sede apostolica (APSA,
for short), essentially the central bank of the Vatican, which also manages the
immense real estate holdings of the Holy Roman Church; the Governorate, the
body in charge of the museums, commercial activities, contracts for normal and
special maintenance of buildings and facilities, the post office, and telephone
services; the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, which
oversees all the Vatican offices; and the IOR, the bank that administers assets
earmarked for religious works and charity. All the names that count are here.

My knowledge of this meeting is based both on the recording and on the

testimony of some of the participants. Through their accounts I was also able to
get a visual picture of the faces and expressions, the tensions and dismay. And I
was able to ascertain—through this live recording—the resolute position of the
Pope, so sweet and affable in public appearances, but steadfast and firm before
his closest collaborators. Francis of the big smiles and kind words shows himself
to be absolute in his goals and intolerant of the Curia’s “human ambition to
power,” which had also been criticized by his predecessor, Benedict XVI. His
words attest to a truth that is quite different from the normal state of affairs
described in dry official press releases and flattering news stories—a dramatic,
unmentionable sin that was supposed to be kept secret in the Apostolic Palaces.

Exclusive, Never-Before-Published Documentation

I have access to thousands of documents, the most significant of which are
reproduced in this book. They show the incredible waste of money by the men
who govern the Church. At their worst, these men have engaged in wrongdoing
that includes practices closely tied to religious life, such as the procedures for
beatification and canonization—a marketplace in which millions of dollars
change hands—and the management of the Peter’s Pence, the money that is sent
to Rome from every diocese in the world, and is supposed to be used to bring
relief to the poor, in fulfillment of the Church’s pastoral mission and the goals of
Francis. And where, you may ask, do these donations go? This book will
reconstruct the facts and erase all doubt as to where the money trail ends.

The people who made this material available to me did so because they are

pained by the deeply rooted hypocrisy they see in the Vatican. They cannot stand
idly by as these men who know the facts, but refuse to admit the truth, go about
their daily business. Every day they observe the huge gap between what Francis
has promised and what is being done to hinder his reforms and undermine his
credibility.

My previous books, Vaticano S.p.A. and His Holiness, helped to bring down

the wall of omertà and silence that has protected the Holy Roman Church for
centuries. This investigation continues to seek out the truth at the Vatican,
contributing, wherever possible, to flushing out and denouncing the opponents of
the revolution of Francis—a revolution which, let us not forget, was born from
the unprecedented decision of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, to step down.

This book is not a defense of the Pope but rather a journalistic analysis of the

serious problems afflicting the Church today, caused by an ecclesiastical
leadership and power circles hostile to change. My intention, once again, is to
lend transparency to an authority that has long been obfuscated by narrow, often
illegal, interests at odds with evangelical principles. As before, I am not driven
by anti-clericalism, but by the desire to acquaint Catholics and non-Catholics
alike with the contradictions of the Church—a Church that Francis wishes to
reform radically, turning it into a home that is finally open to the needy and the

poor and no longer focused on its own privileges and jealous of its own
indestructible power.

In May 2012, after the publication of His Holiness, the Curia reacted to the

book with its traditional obscurantism, trying to hunt down my sources. Shortly
after, the arrest of Joseph Ratzinger’s butler, Paolo Gabriele—my source for
important documents in the book—made headlines. He would later tell friends
about his detention in a cell too small for him to even spread his arms. Gabriele
was found guilty of theft after a quick trial. He should have been commended for
passing photocopies of documents to a journalist and letting the world know
what was happening in the Vatican. Instead, he was treated as a criminal.

Paolo Gabriele lost his job and had to leave the house where he had lived with

his family. He wanted to make public the incredible difficulties that the Holy
Father was facing every day—the same problems that would lead to the Pope’s
resignation less than one year later. Benedict XVI pardoned his butler. Today we
know that he often inquires as to Gabriele’s health, whether he has a job, and
how his children are doing at school. On Christmas and other occasions,
Ratzinger sends presents to his family. But at the Vatican, among the cardinals
and senior prelates, the precedent Gabriele created by leaking papers and
documents still casts a long and frightening shadow.

1

Pope Francis Issues a Shocking Accusation

On July 28, 2013, a few hours after his customary religious obligations, Pope
Francis prepared to go to the Apostolic Palace. As always, he checked his
datebook first. “This is what I’ve always done. I carry it in a black briefcase.
Inside is a razor, a breviary, an appointment book, and a book to read.”1 The
Pope carefully reviewed his notes. That morning he had a meeting with
Archbishop Jean Louis Bruguès, the librarian and archivist of the Holy See. But
his most important appointment of the day was a noon meeting scheduled to take
place in one of the most inaccessible and mysterious spaces in the Palace: the
Sala Bologna, on the third floor, between the papal apartment recently vacated
by Benedict XVI and the quarters of the Secretariat of State. The decorations for
this sumptuous dining room had been commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII
(1502–1585), who wanted frescoes of immense maps and cosmic charts to
convey the measure of his ambitious pontificate. Although they had originally
been created for the 1575 Jubilee, they were timelier than ever today, in perfect
harmony with the designs of Pope Francis. Like Gregory’s, Francis’s plans were
also ambitious and mysterious, inspired by his wish to bring the Church into the
world and to fight the Curia’s secret dealings and privileges. His was a soft but
steady revolution that had already triggered a war without rules or limits.
Francis’s enemies were powerful, duplicitous, and hypocritical.

The Pope made his entrance to what looked like a miniconclave. The

cardinals were waiting for him, conversing quietly in small clusters. The tension
was palpable. Cardinal Versaldi, the President of the Prefecture, was present. Off