UNITED STATES
The Norman Transcript
The Mankato (Minn.) Free Press
The Norman Transcript
NORMAN — It might be the ideal environment for a financial scandal: Millions of dollars in assets, a hands-off top authority with higher priorities and little background in finance, a culture of secrecy.
And thus it has been over the years with the Institute for Religious Works, the Vatican bank.
One of the mandates Pope Francis received when he ascended to the papacy was to clean up the increasingly corrupt Vatican bureaucracy, and the bank was high on the list of problems.
A milestone of sorts was reached this week when the bank, for the first time in its 71-year history, published its financial statements. The documents revealed net earnings in 2012 of nearly $117 million, with more than half that sum going to the pope for his charitable works.
The bank also said it won’t do nearly as well this year, in no small part because of the expense of establishing the financial controls the rest of the world expects of a major bank.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.