God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican
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Within a couple of months, that same embassy staff had determined that Benedict was not even an effective autocrat. They noted he not only avoided difficult decisions but he did not authorize anyone else to address problems. That July, less than three months after he had assumed the Papacy, the chief United Nations war crimes prosecutor at The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, visited the Vatican (she had started her career in 1982 in her native Switzerland investigating the Sicilian Mafia and Roberto Calvi).6,I She met with Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, the Secretary for Relations with States (the church’s Foreign Minister). Del Ponte had a lead indicating that a former Croatian general wanted for war crimes might be hiding in Franciscan monasteries in Croatia.8 The Croatian Bishops’ Conference had been “voicing defiant expressions of support” for the fugitive, she told Lajolo. He gave her the brush-off by claiming the “Vatican is not a state, so it could do nothing.”9 Del Ponte was skeptical when Lajolo claimed Rome had no authority over the Croatian bishops.
Del Ponte insisted on meeting with Benedict. The Pope, not sure what to do, simply refused. U.S. diplomats later learned that Benedict did not want to have to choose between ordering the Franciscans to turn over the Croat general or seeming less than cooperative with the U.N. when it came to a war crimes investigation.10 Del Ponte persisted. She was finally told that if she wanted to meet Benedict, she should just join the public any Saturday in St. Peter’s Square. She might be lucky enough to be selected to kiss the Pontiff’s fisherman’s ring.11
That September, London’s Daily Telegraph ran a jarring headline: “Vatican Accused of Shielding ‘War Criminal.’ ” “One of the most wanted war criminals is being shielded by the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican hierarchy, the United Nations’ chief prosecutor for former Yugoslavia said yesterday,” the paper reported.12
The American diplomats appointed to the city-state watched as Benedict and his team fumbled changing the public narrative that cast the church as an obstructionist in the pursuit of justice. Vatican spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls claimed at first that Del Ponte had not provided enough details for the church to act. And, in any case, said Navarro-Valls, the lack of action was Del Ponte’s fault. She had contacted the wrong department.13
Those cavalier responses fueled the controversy. The bad press continued until that December when the fugitive Croat general was arrested in Spain. In his four years on the run, it turned out he had been to Argentina, China, Chile, Russia, the Czech Republic, Mauritius, and even Tahiti. So if the Vatican had not been shielding him, why did it so badly handle the accusation that it was protecting a wanted war criminal? Was it a rookie mistake or a sign that Benedict’s administration had a more serious problem?
The answer, soon in coming, was not good. Another confidential State Department memo (also a WikiLeaks release) highlighted more of what was wrong in the new Pontificate. There was, according to the cable, a “lack of generational or geographical diversity in the Pope’s inner circle. Most of the top ranks of the Vatican—all men, generally in their seventies—do not understand modern media and new information technologies. . . . A culture in which many officials do not even have official email accounts.” It noted “the Italo-centric nature of the Pope’s closest advisors. Other than Archbishop James Harvey, an American and head of the Papal household, there is no one from an Anglophone country in the Pope’s inner circle. . . . This meant few had exposure to the American—or, indeed, global—rough and tumble of media communications.” Whenever the Pope’s advisors wrote something for public release, their style was so “old-fashioned [and] inwardly focused” that “no one outside their tight circles can decipher [it].” As far as the U.S. diplomats were concerned, there was even an unanswered question about “who, if anyone, brings dissenting views to the Pope’s attention.”14
The failure of Benedict and his team to master modern spin control meant that the Vatican invariably played defense whenever problems arose. Instead of delivering and controlling its own message, it seemed only to react—often poorly—to stories that angered or provoked it. The church’s historic view that all things could wait no longer seemed viable. Additionally, the Pope kept missing opportunities to humanize himself and thereby engender populist goodwill. Even when his coterie announced with great fanfare that Benedict had his own email and Twitter accounts, as well as a Facebook page, it was only window dressing. The Pontiff still wrote everything by hand. Although he received hundreds of thousands of emails and tweets, he never looked at a single one. Through his tenure Vatican landlines did not have voice mail; the favored means of correspondence was fax.15
If Benedict did not have a charismatic connection with the faithful would he at least prove his worth with an unwavering and an undiluted vision of the church and his role? That would be a prerequisite for reforming the Curia. Every Pontiff since Pius XII had promised to tackle the Roman behemoth that at times seemed to run Popes more than they ran it. Was it possible that the church’s “hard-knuckled intellect” might be the right man for the task?16 Hope ran high with Benedict.17
There was little measurable progress, though, in the first year of his Papacy. Benedict held endless meetings but they resulted in little concrete action. He issued no hoped-for decrees streamlining the overlapping responsibilities and powers between Curial departments.
Angelo Sodano, the blustery Secretary of State, was past the customary retirement age of seventy-five when Benedict was elected.18 But the Pontiff had allowed him to remain in office. Besides the Pope, no person inside the Vatican wields as much power as the Secretary of State. So Vaticanologists expected that to be one of Benedict’s first appointments. But when he did announce a replacement the following June, more than a year into his Papacy, the pick surprised many.19 The Pope tapped Tarcisio Bertone, Genoa’s cardinal.20 Bertone had no diplomatic experience and had never worked a day in the Secretariat of State. But Benedict knew, admired, and trusted him. He had been Benedict’s deputy for seven years at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.21 The Pope—insisting on absolute loyalty—did not want a Secretary of State whom he had to worry might undermine him.
Sodano, who would become the Dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals, evidently found it galling to hand off the keys to someone who would be learning on the job. No matter what one thought of Sodano’s haughty and often dismissive ways, everyone agreed that he and his small cadre of advisors were seasoned veterans. When John Paul was increasingly hobbled by illnesses during the later years of his Papacy, Sodano and his team had directed much of the church’s day-to-day administration.
Since Bertone’s promotion did not become effective until mid-September, Sodano had time to consolidate his power.22 He wanted to ensure that top aides were rewarded with prestigious postings.23 One slot of particular interest was that of the chief prelate at the IOR, a position that had been empty for thirteen years since De Bonis’s transfer to the Knights of Malta.24 Sodano was the chairman of the committee of cardinals with oversight of the Vatican Bank. Under John Paul, he knew it was not possible to push through such a key appointment without the Pope’s express approval. But Benedict was more pliable. Sodano’s pick as the Vatican Bank’s chief cleric? He appointed forty-five-year-old Monsignor Piero Pioppo, his longtime personal secretary.25
Some senior prelates griped to Benedict that Pioppo’s selection smacked of favoritism and might not be in the IOR’s best interests. That long-empty Vatican Bank position should be the proper province of the incoming Secretary of State, they contended. But Benedict declined reversing it. Instead, he simply instructed his private secretary, Monsignor Georg Gänswein—a noted theologian and canon law professor—to keep an eye on Pioppo.26
It was bad that Benedict had a reputation as someone who could be pushed around by a strong cardinal. Worse was that Bertone turned out to be the wrong man to serve as Secretary of State. Not only did he not have the respect of key Curialists whose support he needed, but he was heavy-handed in throwing around his newfound power.
If there was one area in which some Vaticanologists predicted Benedict might make bold steps, it was with church finances. The Pope’s aides had spread the word that he intended to make the arcane Vatican money world more transparent. “The target of Benedict’s [reform] strategy is the Vatican Bank,” said one press report.29 There was even news that he might make the bold move of merging the IOR and APSA.30
Benedict had allowed Sodano to get his way when it came to Monsignor Pioppo becoming the Vatican Bank’s chief cleric. Now Vaticanologists waited to see what the Pope might do about the IOR’s top layman, Angelo Caloia? John Paul had been expected to reappoint him. Caloia boosters pointed out that, to his credit, he stayed out of Vatican politics. There was little question that under his leadership the IOR was certainly attracting less bad press than when Marcinkus was in charge. Caloia’s low-key approach had prevented him from making too many enemies inside the Curia. It also meant he had few strong backers.
But according to press reports, Caloia would soon be history.II
“Angelo Caloia, an Italian Catholic banker who is its long-serving governor, was provisionally reappointed this year, but the Pope has yet to confirm this. . . . Almost unnoticed, the Pope has moved to end the Caloia era,” wrote Richard Owen in London’s Times.31 “Signor Caloia is respected for his discretion and rectitude, but he is identified with the previous regime and the succession battle to be the new ‘God’s Banker’ is on.”
Other reports said that the Pope’s advisors had urged him to replace not only Caloia but also two other parallel powerhouses of Vatican finance: Cardinal Sergio Sebastiani, of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, and Cardinal Attilio Nicora, APSA’s chief. It was clear, claimed many reports without attribution, that Benedict favored “a fellow German with international credentials” to run the IOR.32
Despite all the high expectation for big changes at the Vatican Bank, Benedict did virtually nothing. He renewed Caloia’s term for another five years. Those who had been banking on the man the Daily Telegraph had once dubbed the Panzercardinal to reorganize the IOR were disappointed. But given his shortcomings as an administrator, it is not that surprising that he shied away from playing too aggressive a hand when it came to the church’s money matters. A warning sign to those expecting reform should have been that shortly after Benedict became Pope, he tabled the Vatican’s annual budgets from the Governorate and APSA.33 Some interpreted that to mean he was tearing apart the figures and preparing to come back to both departments with tough questions. But it turned out he simply had not found the time to sign off on the final drafts, delaying their distribution to the cardinals and bishops for the first time since the policy was adopted in 1987. Although it had no material impact on how the church raised money and paid its bills, it reinforced Benedict’s image as someone disconnected from finances.
And it was not just the Pontiff’s failure to tackle reform; his supporters were just as disheartened by his remote approach to seemingly every major issue.34 “One year after his election, Benedict has hardly begun to define his papacy,” wrote author Michael Valpy. “As a nervous Vatican watches . . . just one thing is sure: He’s not John Paul.”35
Benedict had trouble connecting with ordinary Catholics, making the church and the Papacy once again seem less relevant. A September 2006 trip to Germany, thought most Vaticanologists, presented his team a prime opportunity to soften his image and boost his popularity.36 Instead, the trip highlighted Benedict’s emotional detachment. Victor Simpson, a veteran AP reporter, thought the Pope appeared to be “going through the motions.”37 In the village of Marktl am Inn, when he walked past his birth home, he barely glanced at it, instead fretting about staying on a tight schedule. “The photographers and camera operators who had waited for hours outside the house for a poignant visual came away empty handed,” recalls Catholic News Service bureau chief John Thavis, who was part of the traveling press corps.38 “At a southern German sanctuary that had been a favorite of his as a youngster, he did not even mention his personal connection during his talk.39 “This was a pope who didn’t feel obligated to emote in public, and whose speeches and sermons in Bavaria were as flat as stale beer,” Thavis concluded.40
For an address at the University of Regensburg, he had prepared a long discourse about the gap between Europe’s secularism and Islam’s rigid orthodoxy. He quoted a fourteenth-century Byzantine emperor: “Show me just what Muhammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”41 Reporters traveling with the Pope had received an advance copy and before his talk some had pointed out the offending language to the new press secretary, Father Federico Lombardi. But Lombardi “seemed disinclined to run interference for Benedict.”42,III As the journalists predicted, Benedict’s speech prompted a firestorm.43 Riots erupted in a dozen countries.44 There were threats of revenge and calls for Benedict’s death from Middle Eastern al Qaeda offshoots to radical imams at an anti-Pope rally outside London’s Westminster Cathedral.45 The Pope was burned in effigy during massive demonstrations in leading Arab capitals. He apologized four times, each more effusive than the last. But the story had a life of its own. Six churches in the Palestinian territories were torched, a sixty-six-year-old nun in Somalia was executed, an Italian priest was shot to death on the steps of his parish church in Turkey, and an EU diplomat was stabbed to death in Morocco.46 Even John Paul’s recently paroled wannabe assassin, Mehmet Ali Ağca, told reporters that if he could talk to Benedict, he would say: “As someone who knows these matters well, I say your life is in danger.”47 The violent response meant that when the Pope made public appearances, marksmen now took positions on rooftops. When the Pontiff visited Turkey that November, he wore a bulletproof vest under his clerical robe. Three thousand elite army troops guarded him.48
The church later offered a series of excuses as to why none of Benedict’s aides warned him that his language about Muslims was likely to be misinterpreted: Secretary of State Bertone was in transition; it was press secretary Lombardi’s first foreign trip; and no one had yet replaced the outgoing chief responsible for relations with Muslims.49 Vaticanologists knew, of course, that the underlying reason was that those who had influence over Benedict—including his ambitious personal secretary, German Monsignor Georg Gänswein, and a medieval music scholar turned nun, Ingrid Stampa—had little understanding of how every utterance by the Pope was dissected. No one appreciated the ramifications if something was taken out of context and went viral.50
The Islamic calamity was to prove to be the template for the rest of Benedict’s papacy. The Pope and those around him showed time and again they were inept when it came to public relations. In a talk explaining his Muslim comments he angered Jews when he described the crucifixion of Jesus as a “scandal for the Jews.”51 He ticked off South Americans and indigenous groups in Brazil when he omitted any mention of crimes the colonizers had committed. The natives, he said, had been “silently longing” for the Catholic faith the conquistadors brought.52
Nor did the Pontiff and his advisors do a better job of handling their perceived response to one of the most critical issues of his Papacy, the unfolding sex abuse scandal. Whether deserved or not, the public had a poor perception of Benedict, judging h
im as less than enthusiastic in pursuing pedophile priests when he ran the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. That dicastery had been responsible since 2001 for the oversight of all reported abuse cases. (By 2010, a U.S. public opinion poll showed only 12 percent of Americans thought Benedict was doing a good job in dealing with the scandal.)53 That view was reinforced by the slow probe into sex abuse charges over Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legion of Christ (the investigations were still under way when Maciel died in 2008).54 Although ex–Secretary of State Sodano had been Maciel’s main defender and responsible largely for delaying his prosecution, it was John Paul and then Benedict who got blamed (Benedict at least forced Maciel from his active ministry for “a life of prayer and penance,” a disciplinary action John Paul had refused).
When a slew of decades-old sex abuse accusations in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, and Austria hit the press, Benedict and his team defensively explained why the church still did not favor reporting the crimes to civil authorities. They were unskilled at getting out the word about what steps Benedict had taken, such as streamlining the process to defrock abusing priests (it would not be until January 2014 that news broke that a record number of 384 priests had been defrocked during just two years of Benedict’s reign, 2011–12).55
Given the bungling of those charged with burnishing the Pope’s reputation, it was little wonder the Vatican often seemed under siege. When a New York Times story claimed that while he was a cardinal, Benedict had failed to order the removal of a Milwaukee priest accused of abusing up to two hundred deaf boys, his enraged aides seemingly stumbled over each other to prove who was the most incompetent.56 In one Sunday sermon at St. Peter’s, with Benedict in the front pew, a priest compared the church’s bad press over the sex abuse scandal to what Holocaust victims had endured. Cardinal Sodano tried putting out that fire with a lecture to the press corps, but he set off another uproar by dismissing the sex abuse charges as “idle gossip.” A couple of weeks later Vienna’s Cardinal Christoph von Schönborn, in what he mistakenly thought was an off-the-record chat with reporters, revealed how Sodano had forced Ratzinger in 1995 to back off a sex abuse probe of Schönborn’s predecessor, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groёr.57