Garry O’sullivan: the Biggest Problem Facing "Medieval" Vatican Is Itself

Irish Independent
October 9, 2012

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/garry-osullivan-the-biggest-problem-facing-medieval-vatican-is-itself-3253655.html

WITH the Pope's butler now convicted of theft and under Vatican house arrest awaiting a probable pardon from Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican will be hoping that the Vatileaks scandal can be put behind it. Yet it is not clear that it can.

Even the most conservative of Catholics living here in Rome yearn for transparency and real reform, their initial scepticism of corruption in the Vatican beaten down by years of evidence to the contrary.

The Pope's spokesman, Federico Lombardi, believes that the media goes too far and presents the normal human frailties in the Vatican's government as fights, divisions and interest group struggles, which he says goes well beyond reality.

Yet it is precisely the efforts at transparency that seem to cause the Vatican to shoot itself in the foot on a regular basis.

Take the case of the Vatican's government number two Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who cleaned up much of the financial corruption and was then packed off to the US as nuncio, a high-profile position but not one that he sought.

It was this unseemly transfer of Archbishop Vigano which the Pope's butler cited as the reason for exposing corruption in the Vatican.

Transparency around the long-awaited clean-up of how the Vatican dealt with child abuse came in the form of Monsignor Charles Scicluna, who for over a decade took a tough line on abusive priests, many of whom were Irish. Msgnr Scicluna once criticised the "deadly culture of silence" or "omerta" in the church which, he said, "is in itself wrong and unjust".

Yet now Msgnr Scicluna is being sent back to Malta and no successor has been named.

This is seen as the Vatican again shooting itself in the foot.

If child abuse is at the top of the Vatican's agenda, you don't send away your top man before you have a successor to announce.

And this is despite drafting in a Fox news TV anchor, Greg Burke (Opus Dei) to try and salvage some PR for the gaffe-prone secretariat of state.

AND it is in this void that the rumour mill grinds. The latest rumours concern the investigation into the Legionnaires of Christ, once headed by the drug-taking and child-abusing Fr Marcial Maciel, a deceased Mexican priest who was very close to Pope John Paul II.

According to informed sources, ˆ173m has been discovered in the accounts of the Legionnaires.

Fr Maciel was well known for his closeness to wealthy Mexican benefactors but these allegations suggest that he was heading up a massive money-laundering business for Mexican drug cartels.

If this is true it could be devastating as the Legionnaires were the chief paymasters for years behind the scenes, contributing to Pope John Paul's trips around the world, including, it is alleged, Ireland in 1979.

Under Pope John Paul, Fr Maciel was untouchable.

Add to this mix the Vatican Bank, which has for years been in the midst of a scandal over tax fraud and money laundering and which has seen the Italian authorities along with the Council of Europe's experts on money laundering putting it under close scrutiny

While Fr Lombardi might well have cause for saying that the media loses the run of itself, it is the "omerta" that still exists that fuels speculation.

However, the biggest problem facing the Vatican is itself -- as former President McAleese has pointed out.

So too did Fr Alberto Athie, the Mexican priest who in 1998 tried to bring sexual abuse claims against Fr Maciel to the attention of the then Cardinal Ratzinger, the Vatican itself.

The Vatican is responsible for the ultimate failure in governance, because it is a medieval model -- with no divine mandate -- and is demonstrably unfit for the purpose of governing a modern church of 1.5 billion Catholics.