VATICAN CITY
AFP
By Francoise Kadri (AFP)
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis’s bid to take the scandal-dogged Vatican bank in hand has stepped up a gear, experts said Tuesday, with the ousting of top management from the institution following the launch of a special papal probe.
Officially, Paolo Cipriani and Massimo Tulli, director and deputy director of the bank, handed in their resignations on Monday “in the best interest of the institute and the Holy See”.
The bank’s president, Ernst von Freyberg, put their decision down to a need for “new leadership to increase the pace” of bringing the institution “in line with international standards against money laundering.”
Religious and judicial specialists on Tuesday said the Vatican had forcibly shed two long-serving chiefs who survived the unceremonious eviction in May 2012 of the former head, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, purportedly for poor management but amid reports of money-laundering.
Their expulsion was deemed opportune by the Vatican, according to Fiorenza Sarzanini in the Corriere della Sera daily, because Cipriani and Tulli are of interest in an inquiry launched by Rome prosecutors in 2010 into money-laundering.
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