Pope Francis set up a special commission of inquiry yesterday to reform the Vatican bank, his boldest move yet to get to grips with an institution that has embarrassed the Catholic Church for decades.
Money laundering investigation is still under way
The high-powered, five-member panel, which includes four prelates and a female Harvard law professor, will report directly to him, bypassing the Vatican bureaucracy that itself has sometimes been hit by allegations of scandal and corruption.
The Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), as the bank is formally known, has long been tarnished by accusations that it has failed to meet international transparency standards intended to combat money laundering and tax evasion.
The Vatican said the commission, which Pope Francis set up with a personal decree known as a chirografo, would enable him “to know better the juridical position and the activities of the Institute to allow an improved harmonisation with the mission of the univer-sal Church”.
It said the commission would have full powers to obtain all documentation and data necessary and bypass usual rules that oblige officials to respect the secrecy of their office.
The decree ordered the commission to give its conclusions and all supporting documents directly to him.
The bank, founded in 1942, will continue to be run by current administrators and be overseen by existing regulators while the commission carries out its task.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the bank was not being put under “special administration” but that the commission would have ample powers.
The announcement of the new commission came as Vatican sources confirmed media reports that Italian magistrates were investigating Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, an accountant in another Vatican department that deals with financial administration, on suspicion of money laundering.
Vatican sources said in April the Pope, who has said he wants the Church to be a model of austerity and honesty, could decide to radically restructure the bank or even close it.
Pope Francis has laid great emphasis on removing an image of privilege from Church operations, and IOR’s new president Ernst von Freyberg, a German, has begun a review of all its accounts and activities.
The commission is made up of Italian Cardinal Raffaele Farina, French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, Spanish Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta Ochoa de Cinchetru, American Monsignor Peter Wells and Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard professor who is president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and a former US ambassador to the Vatican.
The European anti-money laundering committee, Moneyval, said in a July report that the IOR still had to enact more reforms in order to meet international standards against money laundering.