Vatican Conspiracy Leaks Attributed to 'Power Struggle'

By Paddy Agnew
The Irish Times
February 13, 2012

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/0213/1224311682872.html

AN OUTSIDER could be forgiven for thinking that an unlikely troika of John Le Carré, Dan Brown and David Yallop has been writing current Vatican news reports.

In recent weeks, thanks to a series of apparently authentic leaked Holy See documents, we have moved from accusations of graft and corruption within the Vatican city-state to reports of an alleged "murder conspiracy" that would see Pope Benedict XVI dead by November of this year.

This latter "revelation", contained in a document consigned last month to the Pope by Colombian cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, has been dismissed both by the Holy See and by the Archbishop of Palermo, Cardinal Paolo Romeo. Cardinal Romeo is alleged to have revealed the plot while on a visit to China last November.

The murder conspiracy speculation comes just two weeks after an Italian current affairs TV programme, The Untouchables, alleged that the current papal nuncio to the US, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, had been promoted to that post, primarily to get him out of the Vatican.

His reforming zeal as secretary general of the Vatican had made him plenty of enemies.

The sense that someone in the Holy See is keen to leak in-house Vatican gossip was further reinforced last week by (admittedly not new) allegations of money-laundering by Vatican bank IOR (Istituto per le Opere di Religione).

Those accusations, again broadcast on The Untouchables, prompted the Holy See's senior spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, to issue two rebuttals on successive days last week.

As far as the Vatican bank is concerned, it is true that an important deadline is fast approaching.

This will come in June when a European commission will decide whether the Holy See fully conforms to tough anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financial legislation.

In that context, the Vatican in recent weeks has ratified three different United Nations conventions concerning money-laundering, transnational organised crime and terrorism.

So, what then is going on? Has this flurry of unseemly, tabloid-style Vatican gossip/accusation got anything to with the fact that next weekend Pope Benedict will hold a consistory to appoint 22 new cardinals?

Writing in his "Vatican Insider" blog, senior Vatican reporter Andrea Tornielli yesterday suggested that the only conclusion to be drawn from the leaking of authentic Holy See documents, however far-fetched their content, is that "there is a clear power struggle" within the Vatican.

Like everyone else, Tornielli pointed out that last weekend's revelation about the so-called "murder conspiracy" also named Benedict's successor as the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Angelo Scola.

With a consistory upon us, has the jockeying for position at the next conclave already begun?