{"id":961,"date":"2015-11-06T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2015-11-06T11:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/?p=961"},"modified":"2015-11-06T14:03:54","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T13:03:54","slug":"why-juicy-vatican-secrets-are-getting-harder-to-keep-even-under-pope-francis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/?p=961","title":{"rendered":"Why juicy Vatican secrets are getting harder to keep, even under Pope Francis"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michelle Boorstein & Paul Farhi \/\u00a0Stefano Pitrelli contributed to this story<\/a> from Rome<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"Italian journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi suggested that his book was made possible by the desire for more expansive reforms. (AP)<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Gossip and internal politicking are so much a part of Vatican life that an old Rome joke goes: \u201cIn the Church, a secret is\u00a0something you only tell one person at a time.\u201d<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

But this week the definition of secret-spilling got blown up.<\/p>\n

Two Italian journalists \u2014\u00a0an economics reporter for a prominent newsweekly and a muckraking TV figure \u2014\u00a0published books that\u00a0used extensive leaked Vatican data to show in detail the kind of financial irregularities that in the past have come out in\u00a0dribbles and rumors. And the alleged findings are dramatic, from the top Vatican official whose swanky Rome penthouse was refurbished\u00a0by a church charity to the Vatican pension fund\u2019s $800 million hole, to a report that Vatican real estate is worth about seven\u00a0times as much as is reported on balance sheets.<\/p>\n

Even for a place accustomed to leaks, this week produced a torrent, including surreptitiously made recordings of Pope Francis \u2014\u00a0a barrier Vatican-watchers said had never been crossed before. For an institution long accustomed to some standard of deference,\u00a0one thing is becoming clear: The Catholic Church is in a new era.<\/p>\n

\u201cCardinals living in fat apartments for free \u2014\u00a0we\u2019ve known that since the dawn of time. But this is a new level of stuff spilling\u00a0out. It\u2019s the Catholic version of people-have-the-right-to-know,\u201d said John Allen, a longtime reporter on the Vatican and\u00a0Catholicism who is associate editor of Crux, a Catholic site owned by the Boston Globe. Of the Vatican, Allen said: \u201cI think\u00a0they\u2019re living in a world that doesn\u2019t exist anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vatican officials obviously want to deter the kind of extensive leaks that fueled Emiliano Fittipaldi\u2019s \u201cAvarizia\u201d (\u201cAvarice\u201d)\u00a0and Gianluigi Nuzzi\u2019s \u201cMerchants in the Temple,\u201d and Monday announced they\u2019d arrested two insiders on suspicion of leaking.\u00a0One was a Vatican bureaucrat and monsignor; the other an Italian PR maven called \u201cthe pope\u2019s lobbyist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how the Vatican state handles crime<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The Vatican\u2019s Secretariat for the Economy Thursday issued a statement about the books, saying they \u201cappear to have included false and misleading claims\u201d about the spending of\u00a0Cardinal George Pell, the secretariat\u2019s chair.\u00a0Finally and for the avoidance of doubt about the commitment of Cardinal Pell to cost management and control, the Secretariat completed the year well below its 2014 budget and was one of the very few entities to propose a reduction in spending in 2015, the statement read.<\/p>\n

Neither reporter, interestingly, is part of the Vatican\u2019s extensive press corps, dozens of journalists called \u201cVaticanisti.\u201d\u00a0But recent years have been unusual at the Vatican, with Pope Benedict launching and then Pope Francis continuing a major effort\u00a0to reform the bureaucracy \u2014\u00a0in particular the Vatican\u2019s finances. These partnerships have brought in an unprecedented number\u00a0of secular consultants from firms like McKinsey & Co., the KPMG international accounting firm and the Promontory Financial\u00a0Group into the orbit of the Vatican, meaning dozens more outsiders have access to internal files, and many on the inside are\u00a0stirred up in ways that might make them want public attention.<\/p>\n

Francis also created a new high-level cardinal advisory board nicknamed C9\u00a0for the nine cardinals who are members.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"Gianluigi Nuzzi at a news conference. (Getty Images)<\/div>\n

\u201cThere is definitely more coming out, because there are more documents to be leaked. We\u2019ve never before had a C9 and KPMG\u00a0and Promontory and mountains of studies,\u201d said Philip Pullella, a senior Reuters correspondent in Rome for more than three\u00a0decades. Leaking goes in cycles, he said. \u201cWe were in a bear market and now we\u2019re in a bull market. Now things will get a\u00a0bit more difficult [for journalists.] But things will come around again. You have to remember this is the Vatican, and Italy;\u00a0we\u2019re in the land of Machiavelli.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the arrests, it\u2019s not clear who Nuzzi and Fittipaldi relied upon, though both said their sources included clergy and\u00a0lay people.<\/p>\n

Fittipaldi, who writes for the newsweekly L\u2019Espresso, suggested that his book was made possible by the desire for more expansive\u00a0reforms.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor 2,000 years the church has always tried to wash its dirty laundry behind its holy walls. And even in recent years, regardless\u00a0of the announced new transparency that was supposed to wipe out economic and financial scandals, corruption and personal enrichment,\u00a0the Vatican tried to keep the skeletons hidden in the closet,\u201d he told The Post. \u201cThere are sources, especially for what concerns\u00a0my book, who decided that transparency shouldn\u2019t remain a promise. Too many scandals to uncover, even in the age of Francis,\u00a0too many enemies aspiring to boycott Francis\u2019s difficult reforms. Too many fake reforms.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were many references in the books to COSEA, a commission Francis established a few months after his March 2013 election\u00a0in order to suggest economic reforms.<\/p>\n

This is the third book on the Vatican by Nuzzi, a TV journalist who has a sensational style of writing but whose work has had\u00a0a massive impact. He was a central figure in a 2012 scandal called Vatileaks, reporting from leaked documents about financial\u00a0improprieties and infighting. Many Vatican watchers believe Nuzzi\u2019s reporting on the out-of-control bureaucracy may have in\u00a0part led to Pope Benedict\u2019s historic resignation, and the prominence at Pope Francis\u2019s election of the topic of economic reform.\u00a0Everyone knew there were power struggles, but he added concrete detail.<\/p>\n

Problems were well-known. \u201cThese are the reasons Francis was instituting the reforms,\u201d said John Thavis, recently retired\u00a0after covering the Vatican for many years for the Catholic News Service.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s new, Thavis and others agreed, is Francis.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a high-profile newsmaker of great interest to many people because he\u2019s doing things differently,\u201d Thavis said.<\/p>\n

Francis said when he was elected that the Vatican\u2019s inner-workings needed far more transparency, and he was secretly quoted \u2014 according to Nuzzi\u2019s book \u2014\u00a0as demanding more openness after finding \u201cunofficial budgets\u201d that itemized money allegedly\u00a0misused by Vatican officials.<\/p>\n

[Francis prepared to battle for reform, aide says<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

But others don\u2019t see a dramatic change in openness.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe very positive tone of coverage [of Francis] gives an impression of openness because there\u2019s more coverage, but there\u2019s\u00a0more coverage because there\u2019s more interest,\u201d said the Rev. John Wauck, a former political speechwriter who has taught communications\u00a0at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. \u201cThe only really noticeable change is the heightened [media] interest\u00a0in the Vatican.\u201d<\/p>\n

There have been some dramatic leaks in the modern church. In the 1960s a commission created by Pope John XXIII to study birth\u00a0control created a report in which a majority of members recommended accepting the practice. It leaked out and was published.\u00a0A year later Pope Paul VI issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae, affirming the church\u2019s official ban on all forms of artificial\u00a0contraception.<\/p>\n

Fittipaldi\u2019s publication, L\u2019Espresso, has published so many leaks in recent years that it\u2019s become almost a tattle sheet for\u00a0Vatican followers. L\u2019Espresso got an early copy of a major papal document this spring, in which Francis argued about the dangers\u00a0of climate change and overconsumption. It also ran a leaked letter from several cardinals complaining to Pope Francis of liberal\u00a0interference in the pope\u2019s meeting last month on family issues.<\/p>\n

Allen said the sentiment about whistle-blowing is a bit different at the Vatican than for reporters covering, say, a major\u00a0corporation or the White House.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom their point of view it\u2019s not principally a matter of policy but of spiritual loyalty,\u201d Allen said. For such leakers,\u00a0\u201cyou inject a degree of moral agony or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michelle Boorstein & Paul Farhi \/\u00a0Stefano Pitrelli contributed to this story from Rome Italian journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi suggested that his book was made possible by the desire for more expansive reforms. (AP) Gossip and internal politicking are so much a part of Vatican life that an old Rome joke goes: \u201cIn the Church, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,92,15,78,21,48],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-washpost","tag-economia","tag-papa-francesco","tag-religioni","tag-roma","tag-sprechi","tag-vaticano"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":963,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions\/963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}