The Italians have a phrase for it: “Siamo all’ultima spiaggia”, literally, we are on the last beach. They have been saying it for the last 30 years, though they now insist that this time it is really true. The money has run out. The pension crisis is looming, and all attempts to get to grips with the problem have failed. But this is not Italy we are talking about, it is the Vatican.
For decades the Roman Curia, the Church’s central organ of government, has been widely seen as unfit for purpose. One person who saw this clearly was the late Pope Francis who, in his exchange of Christmas greetings with the Curia in 2014, lambasted them for what he saw as multiple failings, including something called “spiritual Alzheimer’s”. He seemed serious about reform. Curial Christmas presents — a panettone and a bottle of prosecco each — were cancelled, and recruitment frozen. At the same time, Pope Francis instituted a dicastery for the economy, to bring all the financial departments under one roof, and put a tough Australian cardinal, George Pell, in charge of it. The soap opera seemed to be over, but in fact it was just beginning.
Pell soon found obfuscation and opposition at every turn. Monsignori lamented that they were being forced to account for every cappuccino, and stories were planted in the press about Pell’s own extravagance. The financial audit ordered by Pell was suspended by Cardinal Becciu, the sostituto, effectively the Vatican’s chief of staff. Progress stalled, and matters ended with three spectacular arrests. Pell went back to his native land to face charges of sex abuse, of which he was, after a long process, absolved. (It was believed by some Italians that the arrest and trial of Pell was orchestrated by Becciu, but this seems a stretch, even in a land addicted to conspiracy theories.) Libero Milone, the auditor, a clean pair of hands from Deloitte, was arrested by the Vatican, questioned for 12 hours and charged with espionage, or, as some might put it, merely doing his job. The charges were later dropped. But Cardinal Becciu’s triumph was short-lived. He too was arrested and, with several associates, put on trial in the Vatican for embezzlement, and found guilty. His trial was characterised by impenetrable details of a business deal concerning the ex-Harrods depository in London, and spiced up with stories about a woman, Cecilia Marogna, designated “la dama del Cardinale” (the Cardinal’s lady) who, supposedly on secret work for the Vatican, had splurged half-a-million euros of Vatican money on luxury handbags and high living.
“Cecilia Marogna, designated ‘the Cardinal’s lady’, had splurged half-a-million euros of Vatican money on luxury handbags and high living.
Two things now seem clear. The Pope had appointed reformers, and then not backed them to the hilt. As such, the Vatican remains a patchwork of conflicting fiefdoms and franchises. There’s the Secretariat of State, where Becciu was sostituto, which refused to acknowledge Pell’s authority, claiming that it was “la suprema”, answerable to no one. Meanwhile, the property portfolio, which is very valuable, is controlled by APSA, the agency that oversees the patrimony of the Holy See; much of this property brings in very little money, and is rented out below market value to Vatican employees as compensation for their poor pay. The governorate of the Vatican City State is independent of this, as is the Institute for Religious Works, better known as the Vatican Bank. And while some Vatican enterprises are bringing in cash, notably the Post Office and the Museums, others are losing it hand over fist, such as Vatican Radio. The chief income stream, Peter’s Pence, the annual collection from all Catholic churches in the world, is dwindling dramatically. The crunch is coming. In fact, it may have already arrived.
Inefficiency and corruption damage the brand, and as donations tail off, squabbling over the scraps tends to increase. The Church has still not shaken off the spectre of Roberto Calvi, “God’s Banker”, found dangling under Blackfriars Bridge in 1982. And the whiff of money laundering stubbornly endures. But the finances are only part of the wider administrative problem. In the past 12 years, Pope Francis effectively bypassed the Curia and the usual machinery of government. He appointed bishops personally, rather than through the normal processes as laid down by the dicastery for bishops. This turn to personal rule had some catastrophic results. In Argentina, all the episcopal appointments have been made by the Pope himself. In Mar del Plata, a city close to Buenos Aires, Pope Francis appointed two bishops in a row, both of whom had to resign before taking up the appointment. An interim diocesan administrator had to resign as well, when he was charged with misconduct. As for a previous bishop of Mar del Plata, he only lasted a year in his new job in another diocese. All of the appointees were well known to Pope Francis, but the vetting and due diligence were clearly insufficient.
After a time, a pattern of administrative failure emerges. In England, not an important country for the Vatican nor one Pope Francis took a close interest in, two newly appointed bishops of Portsmouth in a row resigned before taking up their appointment; this was presumably the fault of the dicastery for bishops. In Chile, there was an unseemly fight (complete with fisticuffs in the cathedral) over Pope Francis’s appointment of Bishop Barros of Osorno, who was imposed but eventually withdrawn after a long squabble which ended with all the Chilean bishops offering their resignation en masse. But the worst cases concern a man called Gustavo Zanchetta and another called Marko Rupnik. Both are accused of sexual crimes; in both cases, due process has been ignored.
Consider the Zanchetta case. In July 2013, Pope Francis appointed him bishop of Orán in Argentina, one of his earliest episcopal appointments. Zanchetta was well known to the pontiff, indeed a friend. Four years later, he resigned for health reasons. Zanchetta was later sent to Spain for psychological assessment and then employed in Rome working as an “assessore” in APSA, a job specially created for him. Only later did it emerge that in 2015 one of Zanchetta’s secretaries had found sexually explicit images on his cell phone, including naked selfies of Zanchetta. Evidence suggests the Pope knew about this at the time, as he had summoned Zanchetta to Rome in October 2015. However, Pope Francis believed Zanchetta’s claim that his cell phone had been hacked.
Only in January 2019 was Zanchetta suspended from his Curial position for unspecified accusations of abuse. A church investigation was ordered, and a report filed. A canonical trial of Zanchetta was announced as imminent. In June 2019, Argentine prosecutors charged Zanchetta with sexually abusing two seminarians. Later, a charge of embezzling state funds was added. The trial began in February 2022 and Zanchetta was convicted of sexual abuse and sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison. However, the Argentine Bishops’ Conference asked for clemency and Zanchetta was allowed to serve his sentence under house arrest in a residence for retired priests. As for the canonical trial, that has disappeared from the radar, which means that Zanchetta continues to be a Catholic bishop in good standing. Who is protecting him, and why?
The Rupnik case is somewhat different, but worse. Rupnik, a well-known Slovenian celebrity priest, Jesuit and mosaic artist, is accused of sexual abuse against adults, in this case nuns who were under his spiritual direction. Rupnik has not been found guilty in a court of law, and probably never will be. However, his canonical crimes are clear. He absolved the sins of his partner in sexual sin, for which he was automatically excommunicated in 2019; nevertheless, the excommunication was almost immediately lifted, because, we are told, Rupnik repented. Moreover, because various allegations against Rupnik, received in 2019, dated back to the Nineties, they could not be investigated as there was a statute of limitations, which the Pope declined to lift. In 2020, Father Rupnik preached at the Lenten retreat in the Vatican. However, the Rupnik scandal ground on; some of the nuns went public. The Jesuits expelled him from the order for disobedience, and finally the Pope lifted the statute of limitations, to enable a canonical trial. This has not to date started, the excuse being that the appointment of judges is proving too hard. The person in charge of bringing Rupnik to justice is Cardinal Fernández, an Argentine and close collaborator of the late Pope Francis.
It was not always this way. Benedict XVI, shortly before becoming pope, spoke of driving the filth out of the Church. When he was pope, he sentenced the sexual abuser Marcial Maciel to a life of reclusion, by decree, without trial, as the Pope, an absolute monarch, can. Maciel had been protected by many during the pontificate of John Paul II, but Benedict moved against him swiftly and firmly. It can be done. But Rupnik continues to be a priest in good standing: who is protecting him, and why?
Administration, administration, administration is not quite the alluring slogan one could hope for, but it is this — the restoration of due process, and the urgent need to get things done — which will be the main challenge for the next pope. And it is decades overdue. At the tail end of the pontificate of John Paul II, who died in 2005, there was a perception that the Pope had neglected the government of the Church, thanks to his foreign travels and his long absences from his desk in the Vatican. It was hoped Benedict XVI would reform the Roman Curia, but that challenge, along with the Vatileaks scandal, defeated him, despite the promising start with Maciel. Pope Francis, too, failed to make effective changes. It’s now up to the next man. In the meantime, the Vatican is beginning to look like the Ottoman Empire in its final years, haunted by bankruptcy and the failure to reform itself.
Is there anyone who can stop the Vatican going the way of the Ottomans? Any cardinal who has run a large diocese well or governed a dicastery in the Vatican efficiently is in with a shot at becoming pope, as long as he is not too old. The trouble is that few names suggest themselves. Some of the cardinals in the running have ruled tiny dioceses, which in population terms are the size of small parishes: think of Mario Grech (Gozo, the Republic of Malta), Pierbattista Pizzaballa (Jerusalem), or even Soane Patita Paini Mafi (Tonga) and Giorgio Marengo (Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia). And since the archbishops of large dioceses like Milan and Paris are not cardinals, they will not be in the Conclave, though they could conceivably be voted for. As for Cardinal Tagle of the Philippines, who has had charge of the huge dicastery of Propaganda Fide in Rome, his administration has been less than stellar. It is this lack of experience among his rivals that puts Pope Francis’s second in command, Cardinal Parolin, Secretary of State, in pole position. He has spent the last 12 years touring the globe, and is well known to other cardinals. But many a man goes into the Conclave as pope and comes out a cardinal, and such will be the fate of Parolin. He is too associated with the controversies of Pope Francis’s reign, at a time when the Church is hoping, perhaps, to leave the Francis era behind.
The next Pope? I wish I knew. Conclaves have a habit of surprising us with little known candidates who go on to make an enormous contribution: Karol Wojtyla, John Paul II, being a prime example, and Angelo Roncalli, John XXIII, being another. All Catholics must be hoping and praying for another Wojtyla or Roncalli, someone who will change the Church, and for the better; it does not matter what sort of theologian he is; he just needs to provide a strong hand in guiding the Barque of Peter, and sail it through the stormy waters that doubtless lie ahead.
