Fixing graft in Church
The new regulations and increased powers of oversight invested in the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See promise greater transparency in the Vatican’s financial affairs, especially where these involve donations.
Pope Benedict XVI arrives in the popemobile to visit the Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square after leading vespers in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
“The necessary transparency in the economic and financial activities of the Holy See and Vatican City State requires an increasingly incisive and unified commitment to correctness on the part of the individual administrations in the management of their patrimony and economic activities,” Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state, told the heads of Vatican offices in December.
He also called for a reduction in expenditure, an inevitable necessity in the light of significant budget deficits (more than R150 million in 2011).
Cardinal Bertone’s words and the prefecture’s new regulations will surely help reassure Catholics who were alarmed by the content of some of the documents that were leaked by former papal valet Paolo Gabriele.
Mr Gabriele said he had illegally leaked the confidential papers to highlight what he saw as endemic corruption in the Vatican.
While the Vatican condemned the publication of private papers and Mr Gabriele’s breach of trust (for which a Vatican court sentenced him to a jail term of 18 months), it did not deny the legitimacy of the content of these documents.
Some of these papers were trivial, but others strongly suggested damaging activities and cover-ups to conceal these. If such inferences were in fact baseless, then the faithful should have been reassured of this by a comprehensive refutation.
In absence of a credible denial, the faithful were left to suppose that the Vatican did not always meet the highest levels of fiscal integrity.
Some questions still have not been satisfactorily answered.
We still have no clarity as to why Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, whose leaked letters to Pope Benedict and Cardinal Bertone seemed to allege corrupt practices in the awarding of Vatican tenders, was suddenly transferred to the US nunciature, against his strong protest and three years ahead of the end of his contract as secretary-general of the commission that governs Vatican City.
While very public action was taken against Mr Gabriele, none seems to have been directed at those who were responsible for mismanagement of the Holy See’s funds, be it by incautious overspending or by involvement in corrupt practices.
The mission of the Church is not aided when, in the public’s mind, the perceived whistleblower is punished while those who lapsed in their fiscal responsibilities are not visibly held to account.
The prefecture’s distinction between internal and external transparency may not satisfy those who are concerned about potential cover-ups of financial mismanagement.
A balance must be struck between the rights of those suspected of transgressions and the right of the faithful to know about these transgressions. And in this, the motive of not giving scandal is simply inadequate at a time when secrecy in itself gives scandal.
Cardinal Bertone’s address to the curial heads seems to acknowledge a problem and presents an undertaking that the Vatican’s economic activities shall now be governed by the highest levels of ethics – correcting lapses which, it must be noted, also occurred on Cardinal Bertone’s watch.
This requires external transparency as well as accountability, both where donated funds and revenue derived from the Church’s patrimony (such as the Vatican Museums) are concerned.
So it is encouraging that the cost of the Vatican’s Nativity scene in St Peter’s Square has been reduced from an extravagant R6,2 million in 2009 – an amount which Archbishop Viganò complained about in one of his leaked letters to the pope – to a more modest R2 million in 2011. (The 2012 crèche has been covered mostly by donations).
The Church, from the pope to parishes and institutions, has a manifest obligation to set the highest standards in its economic activities, much the same as it demands from secular governments.
The faithful are entitled to hold the curia to the encouraging pledge of transparent fiscal management, and to be kept informed when there are lapses.
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