Comparing it to other centers of global power, the Vatican is actually a great deal less secretive, because it has no off-the-books budgets for spy agencies, no classified weapons programs, no “eyes only" intelligence from satellite intercepts and wiretaps. It has, in short, no secrets of state. Moreover, despite the ominous-sounding names of some of the Vatican’s official storehouses of information, such as the Secret Archives, most documentary records are open to any researcher who is willing to buy a tessera, the equivalent of a library card. The Vatican policy of unsealing records by pontificate, usually seventy years after the death of the Pope, compares favorably with similar policies for releasing official government records in the United States and Great Britain. Indeed, some historians say the Holy See has been more forthcoming with critical records from World War II, for example, than either British or American intelligence agencies. Moreover, part of the reason that the Vatican can’t just throw open its archives is not a penchant for secrecy, but simply logistics: documents have to be sorted, stamped, registered, and bound. That’s expert work requiring a specialized knowledge of languages, church history, and Vatican systems, and at one stage the Holy See had only two full-time archivists on the job. Today that number is larger, but there are still under ten, because this kind of specialization doesn’t grow on trees.
It certainly is true that the Holy See imposes an official obligation of secrecy upon employees. The Regolamento generale, or employee handbook, distinguishes in article 38 between two types of secrecy. The first is the segreto d’ufficio, or secret of the office. It stipulates that no employee may give information about decisions or other news that they may know because of their work to anyone who does not have a right to that information. It might be called routine secrecy, a more acceptable-sounding word for which to Western ears would be “confidentiality." The second is the segreto pontificio, or pontifical secret, which is more rigorous, historically replacing the old “secret of the Holy Office." It calls for swearing an oath to protect the confidentiality of major decisions that concern the life of the Church. Matters that fall under pontifical secrecy are listed below. Violations can be punished with excommunication.
Every employee, from the moment he or she assumes an office in the Roman Curia, is expected to observe the rules on secrecy in both the general Regolamento as well as in the specific handbook for their dicastery. Personnel are also obliged to swear a profession of faith, an oath of fidelity, and a pledge to observe the segreto d’ufficio before the head of the dicastery or another superior, according to a formula set out in article 16 and appendix 1 of the Regolamento. The rules of pontifical secrecy are further spelled out in an instruction of February 4, 1974, Secreta continere. Falling under pontifical secrecy are: 1) the preparation and redaction of pontifical documents for which pontifical secrecy is expressly anticipated; 2) affairs that have to be dealt with by the Secretariat of State under pontifical secrecy; 3) doctrinal denunciations and publications of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as well as the investigations leading up to these acts; 4) extrajudicial denunciations of crimes contra fidem or contra mores, meaning against the faith or against morals, and crimes against the sacrament of penance, as well as the procedures leading to these denunciations; 5) acts of representatives of the Holy See relative to matters covered by the pontifical secret; 6) the creation of cardinals; 7) the nomination of bishops, apostolic administrators, and other ordinaries with episcopal power, including vicars, apostolic prefects, and pontifical legates, and all the informational procedures related to these appointments; 8) the nomination of superiors and other major officials of the Roman Curia; 9) anything that refers to codes and coded correspondence; 10) the affairs and practices of the Supreme Pontiff, of the chief cardinal or archbishop of a dicastery, and of pontifical representatives of sufficient importance to be covered by the pontifical secret.
These obligations may sound sweeping, but for the most part they boil down to, “Don’t give out the office’s business before it’s finished." It’s an expectation that most bureaucratic systems impose. It should also be noted that the Holy See sometimes has good reasons for insisting upon confidentiality. In canon law cases involving allegations against priests or lay employees, for example, secrecy is designed to allow witnesses and other parties to speak freely, the accused party to protect his good name until guilt is established, and victims to come forward without exposing themselves to unwanted publicity. Absolute transparency would not necessarily serve the interests of justice.
Three other values have traditionally supported secrecy in the Church. First is a certain view of law. Law, from a Roman point of view, is the expression of a human ideal, a descriptor of a perfect state of affairs. This view carries with it a realism that most people, most of the time, will fall short of the law’s ideal. It is important to uphold that ideal, however, to point people beyond themselves. Too much focus on violations could lead people to question the wisdom, or the feasibility, of the law. The public forum is for discussion of the ideal; the private forum, behind closed doors, is where individual failures are addressed. Second, there is a respect for authority. If the working assumption of democracies is that power corrupts, within the ecclesiastical system it’s precisely the opposite—power ennobles, because it flows from Holy Orders and draws on the grace of the sacrament. Secrecy thus carves out a space in which Church authorities can use discretion, finding a solution that best fits a particular set of circumstances, without fear that it will become swept up in broader public debates. The third value is objectivity. It drives some people crazy that the Vatican will not hand over its case files even to interested parties. The logic, however, is to protect the independence of the one giving judgment by not making public the input he or she has received, thus subjecting it to “spin." (This point will be further developed in chapter 3.)
There is also a spiritual logic for a certain parsimony when it comes to public disclosure. Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, former master general of the Dominican order, puts it this way: “At the heart of Catholicism and indeed of the Jewish and Christian tradition, is a belief in the immense power of words. Creation is the fruit of God’s word, and the Incarnation is a Word made flesh. The sacraments are also an instance of the trans-formative power of words in our faith. So it follows that one cannot bandy words around irresponsibly. They can give life, but they can also kill. St. Thomas Aquinas believed that one of the most serious sins was to destroy another person’s reputation by what one says. This is something that the press does frequently. I believe that this reverence for words is at least implicitly there in the traditional concern for secrecy."
While it’s true that the Vatican is hard for outsiders to grasp, this is less because it’s secretive than because it’s unique. It takes time to become familiar with the system and its personnel. Once that’s accomplished, however, there’s very little an enterprising observer can’t ferret out. For a reporter to understand the Vatican, one must master three “languages": Italian; the specialized language of the Catholic Church, meaning a knowledge of church history, scripture, theology, liturgy, and canon law; and the language of the Roman Curia, meaning its systems and culture. One doesn’t have to be a genius to crack these codes, but it requires time. One has to take Vatican officials to lunch and dinner, to attend the sometimes tedious symposia and book presentations and embassy parties where contacts are made and impressions formed, to read the theological journals and news services in several languages where intelligence on the Vatican is found. One has to have the phone numbers and e-mail addresses of theologians and church historians and diplomats handy, with the understanding that these folks are disposed to be helpful. It’s a beat where personal contacts outside official channels make an enormous difference, and all that takes time to cultivate. It is essential, however, if journalists wish to accurately open up this world to the public.
Finally, the Vatican is becoming steadily less secretive under the impact of a generational transition. For Vati
can officials today in their fifties and sixties, whose formative experiences of the Curia came in the 1960s and 1970s, their mentors were products of the Italian-dominated, pre–Vatican II Roman culture, which was considerably more insular, more suspicious of the outside world, more clannish in its approach to working relationships, more clericalist and elitist. Curial officials who started out in the 1990s have been shaped instead by men who came of age in the Curia after the reforms of Paul VI. The internal culture under these officials is more professional and modern, with greater tolerance for diversity and open conversation. This tolerance may still be less than in most white-collar workplaces in the Western world, but it’s a striking change. Curial officials in their thirties today are generally less threatened by the press and less intimidated by their superiors.
An official in a congregation told the following story: “When I first arrived, I was asked to prepare a response to a letter we had received asking the reasons for a particular decision. I worked hard on it, hitting the books to explain the mind of the congregation on this particular point. What I came up with was two pages long. When I finished, I submitted the draft to the secretary. He called me into his office to tell me I had to learn the style of the Roman Curia, which, he said, is secco, formale, e non dice niente . . . dry, formal, and doesn’t say anything. He handed back the draft with everything crossed out except one line where I acknowledged receipt of the person’s correspondence." The official says things are different today. “There’s been a definite change of style. We’re much more open, more forthcoming, even though I wouldn’t say we’re effusive."
Let’s be very clear: Would it be healthier for the Catholic Church if the Vatican were more transparent? Unquestionably. The heart of this book is the conviction that the Vatican’s unique psychology and culture are difficult for people, including most Catholics, to grasp, which generates miscommunication and animosity. Some of this could be avoided if the Holy See were to make a greater effort to bridge the cultural gap. The Vatican is still a long way from what John Paul said he wanted it to be in January 1984, speaking to one thousand journalists: “A ‘house of glass’ where all can see what is happening and how it carries out its mission in faithfulness to Christ and the evangelical message."
At the same time, it is a serious error—in fact, a myth—to believe that by virtue of its alleged secrecy the Vatican is impossible to penetrate or understand. For anyone willing to take the institution seriously on its own terms, and to spend the time to learn its rhythms, it is quite comprehensible.
MYTH FOUR: VATICAN WEALTH
One can’t always blame outside forces for certain myths. Sometimes the Vatican leads with its chin, as it often has on its alleged “fantastic wealth." Consider the Vatican Bank scandals of the 1970s and 1980s, which combined shady business tactics with spectacular ineptitude on the part of key Vatican officials and their banker friends. The affair fired the imaginations of journalists (in his book, In God’s Name, David Yallop speculated that Pope John Paul I was murdered because he was getting too close to the truth) and filmmakers (Francis Ford Coppola, Godfather III). The affair solidified popular suspicion that Vatican officials spend as much time with spreadsheets as with prayer books and that the Vatican must be swimming in untold billions.
Of course, you don’t need conspiracy theories to be dazzled by alleged Vatican wealth. The Vatican museums groan with some of the greatest artistic treasures known to humanity, and at least some Vatican officials live and work in exquisite Baroque structures whose cash value defies reckoning. I once took a tour of the Basilica of St. Peter offered by the Fabbrica di San Pietro, the Vatican agency that administers the facility. The layman who runs the office said they had recently asked a well-known Italian contractor to make an estimate as to what it would cost in today’s dollars to build the basilica, exactly as it is, from the ground up. He started to work it out, then called off the assignment. There’s no point, he reported back to the Fabbrica; the resources required would be so astronomical that no government or corporate entity would ever contemplate such a project today, and the costs are literally incalculable. For German-speakers the Basilica of St. Peter is an especially bittersweet sight, because it was the sale of indulgences to pay for its construction that helped trigger the Protestant Reformation.
Over the years these riches have scandalized and disillusioned many Christians who fail to see the connection between playing international currency markets and following Jesus of Nazareth. Here’s a rather typical sentiment, from a guest opinion piece written by Marguerite Lilly of Mesa, Arizona, and published in the Scottsdale Tribune of August 13, 2003: “Imagine Jesus walking into the Vatican today. What would he say to those exalted priests dressed in elaborate robes and surrounded by unbelievable wealth? Would he feel he was once again in the temple, face to face with the Pharisees and moneychangers? Sadly I believe so." Or, to take another instance, in August 2003 I published a column about the brutal summer heat in Europe. William McGrane of Easton, Massachusetts, wrote me to ask rhetorically, “How about selling off a few Vatican treasures, buying some air conditioners and opening up cooling centers, i.e., schools, auditoriums, concert halls, etc., and providing genuine relief? Surely Rome could afford it."
Reality is more prosaic. To put it bluntly, the Vatican is not rich. It has an annual operating budget of $260 million, which would not place it on any top 500 list of major social institutions. To draw a comparison in the nonprofit sector, Harvard University has an annual operating budget of a little over $1.3 billion, which means it could run the equivalent of five Vaticans every year. This is to say nothing of the corporate world. The Microsoft Corporation in 2002 spent $4.7 billion on research and development alone, meaning that its R&D budget could fund the Vatican eighteen times over and still take clients out to lunch. That number, by the way, represents a mere 16 percent of Microsoft’s annual sales of $293 billion. The point should be clear: on the scale of the world’s mammoth enterprises, the Vatican doesn’t rate. Its budget would qualify it as a mid-sized American Catholic college. It’s bigger than Loyola-Marymount in Los Angeles (annual budget of $150 million) or Saint Louis University ($174 million), but substantially less than the University of Notre Dame ($500 million).
Where does the money come from? Three principal sources: investments and financial activity; earnings from real estate holdings; and contributions from Catholic dioceses, groups, and individuals. The Holy See had about $100 million in investments in 2002, with losses outstripping earnings by $18.4 million. Real estate holdings brought in roughly $50 million. This means the largest source of support came from contributions. Canon 1271 of the Code of Canon Law obligates bishops to provide funds to support the Holy See, just as parishes support their diocese: “By reason of their bond of unity and charity, and according to the resources of their dioceses, bishops are to join together to produce those means which the Apostolic See may from time to time need to exercise properly its service of the universal Church."
Each year the largest givers, in terms of nationality, are the Catholics of the United States, Germany, and Italy. The Vatican went through twenty-three money-losing years until 1993. The situation turned around after bishops from around the world agreed to directly assist the Vatican, with prodding from an American, Cardinal Edmund Szoka of Detroit, who was brought to Rome to help turn the economic crisis around.
But is the Vatican sitting on a large pile of wealth that doesn’t show up in its annual budget? The total patrimony of the Holy See, meaning its property holdings (including some thirty buildings and seventeen hundred apartments in Rome), its investments, its stock portfolios and capital funds, and whatever it has stored up in a piggy bank for a rainy day, comes to roughly $770 million. This is substantial, but once again one has to apply a sense of scale. What the Holy See calls patrimony is roughly what American universities mean by an endowment—in other words, funds and other assets designated to support the institution if operating funds fall short. The University of
Notre Dame has an endowment of $3.5 billion, a total 4.5 times as great as the Vatican’s. Once again, when it comes to Vatican wealth, there is less “there" there than most people believe.
A word about the “Vatican Bank," technically known as the Institute for the Works of Religion, or IOR from its Italian acronym. According to an April 2002 report in the Independent, the bank manages approximately $3.5 billion in annual assets. It should be noted, however, that the IOR does not belong to the Holy See, and neither do those assets. They belong, as in any bank, to the depositors—in the case of the IOR, these include religious orders, Catholic organizations, Vatican employees, and other private individuals. Profits and dividends from the bank go to the Holy See, but they do not generate mammoth amounts of money (presuming a 10 percent rate of return, the bank might produce $3.5 million each year). The Pope cannot simply spend the Vatican Bank’s $3.5 billion in assets as if it were his own money, and the bank is precious little help in offsetting annual operating costs.
But what of the some eighteen thousand artistic treasures in the Holy See? No one’s ever done an accounting of their potential cash value, but certainly it would run into the billions. Yet the artworks are nowhere included in official Vatican figures. From the Holy See’s point of view, they are part of the artistic heritage of the world, and may never be sold or borrowed against. In 1986, facing a $56 million budget deficit, the Vatican put out a statement saying the artworks and cultural artifacts owned by the Roman Catholic Church constitute “a treasure for all humanity" and cannot be sold. In February 2002 a rumor made the rounds that Pope Paul VI had flirted with the idea of selling Michelangelo’s Pietà and donating the proceeds to the poor. A French book about Daniel Wildenstein, one of the world’s most famous art merchants, claimed that Paul had asked him about the logistics of arranging the sale. Vatican spokesman Navarro-Valls, however, denied the report, stating: “This news has absolutely no foundation. Indeed, it was Paul VI who, following the exposition of the Pietà in the United States, gave specific indications that Michelangelo’s marble sculpture should not leave the Vatican again without special permission from the Holy Father, through the Secretariat of State."
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