VATICAN CITY
Time
By Alessandro Speciale / Rome @TIMEWorldJuly 05, 2013
On Friday, Pope Francis fast-tracked approval for the sainthood of two recent pontiffs: Pope John Paul II, who presided over the Church at the end of the Cold War, and Pope John XXIII, who held the liberalizing Second Vatican Council half a century ago. To do so, Pope Francis undercut the Vatican’s traditional bureaucracy and its complex protocols regarding the proof of miracles required to canonize saints. For the Argentine cleric, who assumed the papacy’s top role earlier this year, the move is just the latest sign of his reformist impulses.
Far removed from the realms of saints and miracles, Pope Francis, it seems, has sought to shake up some of the Vatican’s more earthly institutions. The past two weeks have been filled with drama for the Vatican Bank, a tiny organization operating from within the Vatican walls that has been time and again a source of scandal and embarrassment for the Catholic Church. The latest intrigue began with the arrest on June 28 by Italian police of a senior monsignor, Nunzio Scarano, for allegedly planning to smuggle €20 million to Italy in a private jet. Pope Francis then ordered an unprecedented review of the bank by an independent commission. On July 1, came the surprise resignation of the bank’s two top managers. Director General Paolo Cipriani and his deputy, Massimo Tulli, who have led the bank for almost a decade, “have decided that this decision would be in the best interest of the Institute and the Holy See,” said a Vatican statement.
While the Vatican presented their resignation as voluntary, Pope Francis’ move to create a review commission, handpicked by him, with full powers to request documents and question people on the activities of the bank, was clearly seen as a vote of no confidence towards the bank’s management. That is a major step toward establishing better financial transparency for the bank, which is formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) and has long been criticized for its secrecy and lack of accountability. Vatican authorities “have come a long way in a very short period of time” according to Moneyval, a European financial watchdog based in Strasbourg, France. “Catholics around the world have felt Pope Francis’s warmth,” said a Vatican source, referring the simple, heartfelt style of the Argentine pontiff. “But also in the Vatican someone is starting to feel the heat.”
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