He ordered his favorite dish, rabbit stew, then laid the plastic binder on the table. There were maybe twenty typewritten pages inside. He glanced around. The courtyard was empty, no one enjoying a late lunch, or early supper, depending on your point of view. The waiter brought him a glass of red wine, Italian, as he’d never cared for Maltese grapes. He waited until the young man stepped back inside before opening the binder and reading.
Two years ago the Holy Father directed that I conduct a confidential assessment and, if possible, an audit of certain departments within the Holy See. Prior to becoming pope, while he was a cardinal, the Holy Father had served within a variety of departments and was concerned about what he termed “systematic waste, fraud, and abuse.” I was requested to conduct a thorough but wholly secret investigation, drawing no attention to my efforts. After twenty months of clandestine study I can now provide the following summary:
(1) There is little to no transparency in any of the bookkeeping maintained within the Holy See. In fact, it is common practice for departments to maintain two sets of records. One that could be shown to anyone who might request information, the other detailing the actual income, costs, and expenditures. This practice is well known to the cardinals currently overseeing those departments, as it is done under their direct supervision and many of them personally retain the more accurate, second set of books;
(2) Contracts for services by the Holy See to outside third-party providers (which total in the tens of millions of euros annually) are routinely secured without competitive bidding and without regard to cost. Corruption is rampant relative to the awarding of these contracts. Bribery and kickbacks are common. Many times as much as 200 percent over the current market value is paid by the Holy See for these goods and services, all linked to corruption;
(3) There is an ongoing and systematic theft of tax-free souvenirs from the Vatican’s retail shops. This merchandise is being stolen by the pallet load, then secretly sold to outside vendors at vastly reduced prices. The moneys generated from these thefts are currently secretly being shared by at least three cardinals;
(4) One particular outside, third-party transaction is noteworthy. It involves a deal made with an American corporation allowing that company’s cigarettes to be sold in Vatican stores, but only thanks to a secret fee paid to at least two cardinals. Part of that deal also allows several other cardinals to benefit from extreme discounts on at least two hundred packs of cigarettes, collectively, purchased by them each month, for their own use;
(5) An Italian charitable foundation for a local pediatric hospital recently (and secretly) paid €200,000 to renovate a cardinal’s Rome apartment;
(6) The Vatican pension fund currently has a nearly €800 million deficit and is teetering on bankruptcy, though current public financial records show a balance sheet far to the contrary;
(7) There is no detailed inventory of the nearly 5000 buildings owned within Rome by the Holy See. Current balance sheets list the total worth of the Holy See’s real estate holdings within France, England, Switzerland, and Italy at €400 million. The best guess of the actual worth for these properties is over €3 billion. The best explanation for this odd discrepancy downward is that the curia sees public relations advantages in downplaying the actual net worth of the church;
(8) Retirement packages to at least three dozen cardinals are highly exorbitant, far beyond anything considered reasonable;
(9) The granting of free or low-rent apartments to cardinals currently serving within the curia is common. Rents in prime Rome locations are at times as much as 100 percent below market value. One example: a one-hundred-square-meter apartment near St. Peter’s Basilica is currently being rented to one cardinal for €20.67 a month. If market rates were applied to all of the Holy See’s rental apartments, somewhere around €20 million would be generated in revenue each year, as opposed to the less than €6 million currently being realized. The same discrepancy is present regarding the Holy See’s commercial real estate, where many of the current leases are far below market value and could generate somewhere near €30 million more per year.
He could hardly believe his eyes.
It was incredible, made even more so since the information came from within the Vatican itself. Gathered by the Entity.
Straight from the curia.
The word curia meant “court,” but in the sense of a royal court, not a court of