The indomitable finances of God

Milone completed the magic triangle of a reform whose cornerstone would meet Cardinal George Pell, at the head of an unusual superminister of finance with almost as much power as the Secretary of State, and the Council for Economy, a mixed body of lay and religious which would propose and guide the reforms under the baton of the moderate and intelligent Cardinal Reinhard Marx: the only one who is still there. The other two cornerstones of the reform enacted in 2014 are now headed, an obvious threat to the stability of a priority transformation.

Milone's work resembled what had been carried out by the secretary of the prefecture for economic affairs, the Spanish Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, imprisoned for filtering confidential information to two journalists, thus inaugurating the second part of the Vatileaks scandal. In fact it was the post that the Riojan demanded who wanted to hear before the scandal broke out and be prosecuted. In any case, after his failure to obtain the accounts of the different departments - Via Crucis, the book of Gianluigi Nuzzi, describes a man on the verge of insanity before the disavowal of the Curia -, the new driver would have " total autonomy and independence to carry out its mission in all services ". Seen in perspective, it is tempting to doubt it.

A Vatican finance scholar thus describes that process. "Many of the reforms that were intended to be carried out could never be implemented. An evident example was the inability to integrate the APSA [the entity that manages the Vatican's estate and ended up as a second bank] in the Secretariat for the Economy. If even that could not be done, especially for the money it cost to change ownership, how was Milone, a newly arrived layman asking for the bills of decades-old entities operating autonomously? "

But in the eye of the hurricane is usually located to the IOR, the Vatican bank that the Pope even studied to eliminate on his arrival to disconnect the large capital washer. Today, chaired by Jean-Baptiste de Franssu, manages 5.7 billion euros, of which 2,000 are deposits of its 14,960 customers. The accounts have been reduced every year -5,000 less since 2013 - and the rules for the control of money laundering have hardened during the mandate of Benedict XVI, which tried to adapt the entity to the regulations against tax havens. And at the head of that reform placed Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. Three years later, little was given to comply with the wishes of the Secretariat of State headed by the controversial Tarcisio Bertone and inaugurating Vatileaks, he was dismissed. He was blamed for lack of transparency and accused him of what he had pointed out to his enemies. The banker of God ended up leaving the back door of the Vatican, as did his successor - Ernst von Freyberg - a few months after being named and Milone himself. Just when the earth trembled again.