A TONE DEAF CHURCH: Cardinal Accused of Sex Abuse Cover-Up Helps Close Pope Francis’ Coffin
April 26, 2025Daily Scripture Readings and Meditation: Go and Preach the Gospel to the Whole Creation
April 26, 2025
By Mary Ann Glendon, First Things, (Complicit Clergy), April 25, 2025
When Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became pope in March 2013, it seemed promising that he was from what he, as Pope Francis, would call “the peripheries.” His election was expressive of the universality of the Church in a world where over two-thirds of Catholics now live in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And, as a relative outsider to the Vatican, he seemed just the right person to oversee a bureaucracy in need of major reforms.
The various departments of the Holy See had operated with little oversight during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Their method of governing was to leave the internal affairs of the Vatican almost entirely in the hands of trusted subordinates. Sometimes the confidence placed in those subordinates was well merited, but as the old saying goes: “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” Some departments became little fiefdoms. In the financial area, some very unsavory characters were quick to spot and exploit vulnerabilities.
When Pope Francis took office in 2013, he was immediately confronted with a new scandal in the Institute of Religious Works (popularly known as the Vatican Bank) where there had already been scandals enough to delight novelists and filmmakers for years. It was encouraging that the new pope acted right away to appoint a commission (on which I served) to investigate the troubled institution. Though we had full powers to examine all records and question anyone, we were stonewalled at every turn by bank officials. To get a sense of what was going on, I and another commissioner interviewed nearly every one of the bank’s 115 employees, but we found that assurances of confidentiality from the pope himself could not overcome their terror of speaking frankly.
Some months later, when Pope Francis brought in Cardinal George Pell to reform the entire financial system, the Australian prelate was shocked to learn there was no centralized oversight of Vatican finances. One of his first steps, therefore, was to hire a respected external auditor. But Pell had not reckoned with the power of the Curia. As soon as the auditor, Libero Milone, began to look into the finances of the powerful secretariat of state (which at that time controlled a large proportion of the Vatican’s assets), he was fired by Cardinal Giovanni Becciu, who as sostituto was the highest-ranking member of the Curia next to the secretary of state.
