UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
EDITORIAL
It seems counterintuitive, but every time you hear about a financial scandal in the Vatican, that is good news, not bad. It is good news because it shows — to quote the Vatican’s financial watchdog — that the regulatory system is working.
For too long, the church has been racked by financial mismanagement. Now, some will say the basic problem is that clerics shouldn’t be put in charge of finances. Because their training is in theology, they lack either the training or the interest in finances to develop the expertise necessary to run multimillion-dollar, multinational organizations and are too easily compromised by incompetent but devout lay advisers or duped by those with nefarious intent.
A second cause of Vatican financial woes, according to many observers, is geography: The Holy See may be a sovereign nation, but it is culturally Italian, and in Italy nepotism and financial corruption are common. Getting a job or a contract in the Vatican could depend on whom you know more than what skills you bring.
Pope John Paul II clearly had concerns about Italian practices and at the beginning of his papacy gave all the top financial jobs to non-Italians. He appointed Cardinal Edmund Szoka of Detroit to head the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See in 1990. Szoka imposed the first unified chart of accounts for the Vatican, computerized the books and published detailed financial statements.
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