'You Cannot Serve Both God And Money': Vatican's Financial Scandal Takes New Twist
October 14, 202012:00 PM ET
Italian police are stationed in St.
Peter's Square at the Vatican, on Tuesday.
Andreas Solaro/AFP via Getty Images
A financial scandal swirling around the
Vatican has taken a new twist with the arrest of a woman linked to a cardinal
fired by Pope Francis.
Italian
police arrested Cecilia Marogna in Milan late Tuesday on a warrant from the
Vatican City State. A Vatican official told Reuters that Holy See magistrates suspect her
of embezzlement and misappropriation of funds, in complicity with others.
EUROPE
Vatican Plagued By Scandal As Pope
Francis Sorts Through Its Finances
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Before
her arrest, Marogna told Italian media she had received half a million
euros to run behind-the-scenes diplomacy to assist missionaries in conflict
zones in Africa and Asia.
Marogna, 39, is an associate of Cardinal
Giovanni Angelo Becciu. Last month, Pope Francis forced Becciu to resign as
head of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints and stripped him of his
right as a cardinal to vote for a new pope.
Francis did not give a reason for
Becciu's dismissal. But his firing apparently stemmed from Becciu's activities
in his previous post, as the second-ranking official in the Vatican secretariat
of state, where he handled the Holy See's investments.
Becciu
was sacked just as the Italian weekly magazine L'Espresso was
about to publish an article alleging Becciu's financial malfeasance.
Cardinal Angelo Becciu talks to
journalists during a news conference in Rome, on Sept. 25. Cardinal Angelo
Becciu has resigned from the post and renounced his rights as a cardinal amid a
financial scandal that has reportedly implicated him indirectly.
Gregorio Borgia/AP
An exposé in L'Espresso accused
Becciu of nepotism, including steering church funds for charity to a
nonprofit run by his brother on the island of Sardinia.
Reporter Massimiliano Coccia says his reporting showed "Becciu's family
affairs had become affairs of state."
Last
year, L'Espresso linked the cardinal to a shady investment in high-end London real estate.
The Vatican allegedly sank more than $200 million into the venture — mostly
from donations from Catholic faithful — while middlemen allegedly pocketed tens
of millions in fees. Five Vatican employees were suspended.
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Pope Francis was elected in 2013 with a
clear mandate to clean up the Holy See's notoriously murky finances. Since
then, he has made strides in imposing transparency and accountability. But in
the eighth year of his papacy, the Vatican is still plagued by scandal and
intrigue.
This
month, the pope took the unusual step of appearing publicly with Council of Europe Moneyval inspectors
to reassure them he is cleaning house, and he denounced financial speculation.
"Sometimes, in the effort to amass
wealth, there is little concern for where it comes from, whether it was
produced legitimately or whether others were exploited in the process,"
the pope told the financial experts.
Citing Jesus casting the money changers
from the temple, Francis said, "You cannot serve both God and money."
That remark was interpreted as an indirect reference his firing of Cardinal
Becciu.
The day after he was forced out, Becciu
called an extraordinary news conference to defend himself. Seated in front of a
large silver crucifix in a religious institute near St. Peter's Square, Becciu
insisted the money he directed to his brother's organization was intended for
charity.
Sounding outraged, he described what he
called his surreal meeting with Francis. "He said he no longer trusted me
because he had been told by Vatican magistrates that I had embezzled
funds," Becciu said.
Becciu denied wrongdoing and said he
believes Francis was misinformed. He said he was still ready to give his life
for the pontiff.
Pope Francis (right) sits at a table
with Cardinal George Pell at the Vatican, on Monday. The pope warmly welcomed
the cardinal for a private audience in the Apostolic Palace after the
cardinal's sex abuse conviction and acquittal in Australia.
Vatican News via AP
On
Oct. 7, Becciu's lawyer listed several other accusations against the cardinal that he
called "absolutely false." They include the allegation that the
cardinal invested large sums — perhaps including Vatican funds — in speculative
hedge funds.
The
plot thickens
What
makes this scandal particularly ugly is Becciu's public confrontation with his
longtime nemesis — another formerly powerful cardinal — George Pell. After
Becciu's dismissal, Pell issued a statement saying the pope "is to be thanked
and congratulated on recent developments."
Pell
is no stranger to controversy. In 2014, Pope Francis put him in charge of
cleaning up Vatican finances. After a few months as the Vatican's first
minister of the economy, he said he had found "hundreds of millions of
euros tucked away in particular sectional accounts [that] did not appear on the
balance sheet" of the Vatican. He flagged nepotism and ordered an external
audit of all Vatican departments, but Becciu blocked it.
In
2017, Pell's own legal problems began — he was charged with committing sex
abuse against minors in his native Australia decades earlier. He returned home,
went on trial and was convicted, becoming the highest-ranking Catholic
Church official found guilty of child sex abuse.
Pell
served a year in prison until Australia's High Court overturned his conviction in April.
Australia's
High Court Overturns Cardinal Pell's Child Sexual Abuse Conviction
At Becciu's recent news conference, he
recalled clashing with Pell, in the presence of Pope Francis. "Suddenly,
Pell accused me of dishonesty," Becciu said. "I lost my temper, and
yelled at him, 'How dare you say that to me!'"
Italian media are now rife with allegations that
Becciu wired money to Australian bank accounts, as payment for testimony
against Pell. Becciu categorically denies this.
Following
his release from jail in April, Pell was asked by an interviewer whether
he thought the allegations against him were linked to his corruption fight in
the Vatican.
"I don't have any evidence of
that," he said. "Most of the senior people in Rome who are in any way
sympathetic to financial reform believe that they are." Asked what
motivated his accuser, Pell replied, "I wonder whether he was used."
The Australian man who accused Pell of
sexually abusing him has denied allegations he may have been bribed to testify.
Cardinal
Pell returned to Rome on Oct. 1 for what was said to be a long-planned visit to
clean out his apartment but which one commentator described as "the equivalent of a victory lap around the Colosseum."
On Tuesday, Pell met in a private
audience with Pope Francis.
With
the dirty linen on display, National Catholic Reporter
Vatican correspondent Joshua McElwee believes Francis remains
determined to pursue his reforms.
"The great success of this papacy
was bringing the outsider voice, the outsider eye, these great exhortations for
the church to get beyond itself, to go out onto the streets ... to be the
church of the field hospital tending to people's wounds," McElwee says.
On A Roman
Street, Graffiti Celebrates 'SuperPope'
Near
St. Peter's Basilica, a Roman graffiti artist once depicted Francis as airborne, his right fist clenched, his
pectoral cross fluttering in the breeze — a white-caped crusader in constant
struggle with the Vatican's deeply entrenched culture of secrecy.
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