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Vatican Raid on Secretariat of State a Portent of Things to Come?
ANALYSIS: Sources tell the Register that this week’s investigative actions are primarily targeted at Vatican officials who are no longer working at the secretariat.
Edward Pentin
VATICAN CITY — A police raid on offices in the Vatican Secretariat of State, the suspension of five Vatican officials, and the appointment of a leading Italian anti-mafia magistrate as head of the Vatican’s criminal tribunal have sparked intense speculation about the extent of financial corruption in the Holy See.

Vatican prosecutors seized documents, computers, telephones and passports and blocked bank accounts in Tuesday’s raid on the administrative section of the Vatican Secretariat of State, the Church’s central governing body.

The Vatican’s Financial Information Authority (AIF), which is the Vatican’s anti-money-laundering watchdog, was also raided.

A Vatican statement on Tuesday said the promoter of justice of Vatican City Court, Gian Piero Milano, and Alessandro Diddi, adjunct promoter of justice, ordered the search after complaints in early summer from the Institute for Religious Works (IOR) — commonly called the Vatican Bank — and the Office of the Auditor General about financial transactions “carried out over time.”

According to Italian media reports, those transactions revolve around expensive property deals, primarily a 2013 multimillion-dollar real estate transaction in London’s prestigious Mayfair district, which is said to have taken significant losses.

The documents seized on Tuesday reportedly relate to the years 2011 to 2018, the period when Cardinal Angelo Becciu, now the prefect for the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, was sostituto, the official responsible for the administrative affairs of the Secretariat of State.

The Italian magazine L’Espresso reported that Tuesday’s action led to the suspension of five officials: Msgr. Mauro Carlino, head of documentation at the Secretariat of State, and four lay officials: Tommaso Di Ruzza, the director and No. 2 official at the AIF, Fabrizio Tirabassi, who manages financial investments in the Secretariat of State, and Vincenzo Mauriello and Caterina Sansone, administrators in the same dicastery. Di Ruzza did not respond to a Register request for comment.

The raid and suspension show the reforms begun by Benedict XVI and continued by Francis “really work” and that new laws for Vatican City State “are being applied,” the Vatican said in an unsigned editorial in L’Osservatore Romano, also published at the Vatican News website.


“The painful events made public this week are not a sign the system has failed,” it continued, “but rather show the system has “developed antibodies capable of reacting” and that the process of reforming Vatican finances is “well underway.”

But in the same editorial, the Vatican chastised the media for subjecting the five suspended officials to “pillory,” as “any possible responsibility on their part is still to be proven.” It said a Vatican investigation will determine how that information was leaked, but omitted to mention that the names were distributed internally to all Vatican staff.

Tuesday’s events were also followed this week by the appointment on Thursday by Pope Francis of one of Italy’s leading anti-mafia prosecutors as president of the Vatican’s criminal tribunal.

Pignatone’s reputation as a leading Italian chief prosecutor, who has handled major investigations into the Cosa Nostra and ’Ndrangheta organized crime gangs in Sicily and Calabria, points to the extent of the financial corruption needing investigation in the Vatican.

He replaces Giuseppe Dalla Torre, who oversaw two “Vatileaks” trials, one involving the leaking of documents by Pope Benedict XVI’s former butler and the second relating to a priest and lay official working in Vatican finances. Dalla Torre was also involved in the prosecution of the former president of the Bambino Gesu, the Vatican’s children’s hospital, that also has been embroiled in a web of corruption allegations, including assertions that the U.S.-based Papal Foundation was improperly induced to provide funds to bail out the troubled institution.



Other Targets?

The Register was told that the main target of this week’s raid was not primarily the five suspended officials, nor the current leadership in the Secretariat of State, but rather others who have since left the dicastery and whose past actions continue to be subject to scrutiny.

“This raid was not against the current sostituto, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, who is striving to perform a clean-up of the mess he has inherited in the general affairs section administrative offices, but, rather, his predecessor, Cardinal Becciu, and his administrative right-hand man, Msgr. Alberto Perlasca,” an informed source told the Register.

In 2009, then-secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone appointed Msgr. Perlasca head of the administrative office of the Secretariat of State — an influential position that included handling all financial transactions passing through the Secretariat of State. Cardinal Bertone appointed Cardinal Becciu as sostituto in 2011.

Pope Francis, well acquainted with Msgr. Perlasca since he served in the nunciature in Buenos Aires from 2006 to 2008, retained him as head of the administrative office until July this year, when he appointed him promoter of justice at the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Church’s highest court.

Tirabassi was an assistant to Msgr. Perlasca, and Msgr. Carlino, who had only been in the post of head of documentation since July, was for many years the personal secretary of Cardinal Becciu.

The Register source said Archbishop Peña Parra has been making progress on putting the finances in order and that the suspension of Msgr. Carlino was to “move him away” from the current sostituto, “to distance him from highly confidential material.”

Although not directly and publicly accused of wrongdoing, Cardinal Becciu has been indirectly connected with the sudden dismissal in 2017 of the Vatican’s first auditor general, Libero Milone.

Milone maintained his innocence, telling the media at the time that “a small group of powers” were trying to defame his reputation and that they were afraid of what financial accounts and other details he might show to the Pope and Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state.

Cardinal Becciu said at the time that Milone “went against all the rules and was spying on the private lives of his superiors and staff, including me.” Milone insisted it was the other way around, and last year the Vatican dropped all charges against him.

The Register asked Cardinal Becciu Oct. 4 if he wished to comment on this week’s raid and whether he knew of the ill-advised London real estate deal at the center of the raid, but at the time of writing he was reportedly on his way to Brazil and has yet to reply.

The investigations into the Secretariat of State are reportedly connected with the prosecution of Angelo Caloja, a former Vatican Bank president accused of embezzlement.

Internal sources also believe there are connections with financial misconduct reported in the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See (APSA), the dicastery which handles the Vatican’s real estate, several of which are in prime areas of London, and financial assets.

In July, the Register reported on a similar mishandling of London real estate investments by APSA, as well as cyphered accounts in Switzerland connected to the same dicastery.

Vatican investigations into these areas, notably by Cardinal George Pell, then prefect of the Secretary for the Economy, and Milone, led to a series of obstacles emerging, most significantly the abrupt ending in 2017 of the first external audit of the Vatican.

A few months later, Milone was dismissed, and Cardinal Pell was forced to leave the Vatican to defend himself in Australia against clerical sex-abuse charges, which he vehemently denied.

I recall when a Treasures of the Vatican exhibit came through San Antonio, displaying but a little of their fabulous wealth. It made my skin crawl, and I was raised Irish Catholic.

So, you can molest children and that gets covered up, but don't fkuc with the money.

Seriously, Vatican city is a country, smallest country in the world. It is the last absolute monarchy as far as I know. So, if they find this corruption and wish to punish the perpetrators exactly where would they imprison them? Maybe the king (pope) says put them to death. What else?

Hope they clean it up and put all of those crooks in jail.

It's like America in a lot of ways. We have a corrupt Deep State and political class. We even had a foreign-born Marxist as president. But I am still American.

The church has always attracted people who are after money and power. This is true of all churches, and particularly The Catholic Church, because of theocratic control of a lot of countries through the ages.
Greed and control, either through politics or religion, is a story as old as time itself. There are those who enter in to serve God or their fellow people, and those who enter purely to serve themselves.
Any church or organized religion is bound to have it's share of Clinton (crooks and thieves) types, as well as law enforcement and other areas that give you control of others.
Not out to knock Priest or clergy or cops. Just simply stating a fact.
7mm

“ 45And while all the people were listening, He said to the disciples, 46“Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love respectful greetings in the market places, and chief seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets, 47who devour widows’ houses, and for appearance’s sake offer long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation.”

Crooked & evil from its very inception.

Amen.

Next week. Declass.

Then the next week, Clinton Foundation.

Satan is real...he’s been trying to topple Gods holy church since Jesus was still alive as a man. This does not surprise me... nor does it dissuade me

i listen to a lot of catholic radio programing, there are many observers who describe the condition in Rome as 'chaotic'. i don't think the pope is happy with scrutiny from conservative, catholic, american, news outlets, commentators, theologians and educators, of which there are quite a few

That would be child sex abuse charges that he has denied, and been found guilty of...but to be honest I have doubts as to the verdict.

And I have never seen anything to suggest that Pell was anything less than truthful and straight forward in his dealings.

Or LEOs.

Or the Bible.

Lot of dimocrats say the same thing.

Church is big business.

Everything is corrupt!!

certainly everything is corruptible

The Vatican is the world's greatest and oldest bureaucracy, and people are surprised that there is some level of corruption there?

Nobody’s surprised sir. Nobody.

But they seem to relish that the institution of the Catholic Church is subject to the same human failings as the rest of the world. Schadenfreude is not a virtue.

Might have something to do with the fact that the “rest of the world” doesn’t claim that it teaches, governs, and sanctifies with the authority of Jesus Christ Himself.
Agree that schadenfreude is not a virtue.

Too easy. That conflates the Church, its doctrines and precepts, with administration by humans all of whom are bound to screw up to a greater or lesser degree. (And what Christian denomination doesn't believe it is founded on the authority of Jesus Christ Himself?)