VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register
by Edward Pentin Wednesday, October 30, 2013
The National Security Agency has been listening into telephone calls of the Pope and senior Vatican officials, an Italian magazine has claimed.
In an article in Panorama which will appear on newsstands tomorrow, the NSA is reported to have tapped the phonecalls of Vatican officials and senior prelates before and during the Conclave, as well as incoming and outgoing calls from the Domus Sanctae Marthae where the Pope is living.
Panorama also says there are suspicions that the conversations of the Pope were even monitored before he was elected. The magazine refers to the Wikileaks files which, it says, revealed that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had been under surveillance since 2005.
According to the Italian weekly, incoming and outgoing calls from the Vatican were classified into four categories: “leadership intentions”, “threats to the financial system”, “foreign policy objectives”, and “human rights”.
There are also suspicions that calls surrounding the election earlier this year of the new President of the IOR (Vatican Bank), Ernst von Freyberg, were monitored. The IOR has been implementing a number of transparency measures over the past few years, one of which is aimed at eliminating the possibility of terrorist organisations using the Vatican Bank to launder money.
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