Merchants in the Temple (19 page)

Most respectfully, Domenico Calcagno

In financial management, income from bonds amounts to 10.9 million, from active interests to 461,000 euros, while “the outcome of the overall management (YTD surplus as of December 13, 2013) is 27.7 million, 466,000 euros less than projections in the 2013 estimated budget.”
11
An examination of the securities portfolio on September 30, 2013, highlights all the Italian government bonds, which the analysts considered risky, such as the 70 million in multiyear Treasury bonds. In practice, the reserves have been parked in the Italian public debt.
12

This practice may help strengthen the Church's hand when it lobbies Italian politicians. The Vatican's relations with foreign governments—first in Italy but also in Africa and South America—have always relied on various means of persuasion. These include the pressures I documented in my previous book,
His Holiness
, on the Italian President of the Republic to reconsider the laws on the family and on assisted procreation. But they also involve the acquisition of shares of the public debt or other major financial investments, always in government bonds.

On January 22, 2014, Erik Stattin, a Harvard MBA, EMEA partner, and head of the pension and insurance issues of Oliver Wyman Rome, called a meeting of Vatican representatives and other Commission members, including Messemer. Monsignors Vallejo Balda and Luigi Mistò, Chair of the Health Insurance Fund and Secretary of APSA, together with Cardinal Calcagno, listened to the report. The only one to nod his agreement was Messemer. The meeting was decisive:

All of the participants agree in maintaining that on the basis of the actuarial audit conducted by Oliver Wyman, the Vatican pension fund presents a very significant funding gap. This gap is so large that it has the potential to jeopardize the future pensions of Vatican employees. The same audit shows, however, that in the short term the fund is able to finance its activities, which makes it possible to proceed with a restructuring to prevent the collapse of the fund. In any event it is necessary to implement with the maximum urgency drastic measures to prevent the deficit from growing larger.

These measures should include:

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A strengthening of the fund's assets through an injection of capital by the Vatican administrations;

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A redefinition of future pensions. A benchmark of the current Italian pension system should assure a treatment of Vatican employees that is equivalent to what is currently used for employees of the Italian public administrations.

The reform of the pension system should also provide for “the Vatican contributing to solidify the capital in the pension fund. [Finally, there is a need] to adjust the existing benefits for employees to a reasonable economic level.” While the “asset management for the pension fund will be managed by the Vatican Asset Management center, VAM, and the Vatican will guarantee a specific interest rate on assets.”
13

Vatican Asset Management (VAM) represents a very particular proposal, to create a single structure that, for the first time in Vatican history, will be called on to manage all the movable and unmovable assets of the Holy See, including, therefore, the pension fund.
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Not all of Francis's trusted men were in favor of this plan. In fact, a few months later, in the spring and summer of 2014, the VAM would be the cause of a deep split within the COSEA Commission. For too many months the war had been fought behind the scenes, with skirmishes, dirty tricks, and sabotage. On one side were the supporters of Francis. On another were those who tolerated him. And on yet another were those who criticized him and tried to stop him. And from this latter group came a series of intimidations, attacks, and conspiracies to make the Argentine Pope lose his incredible challenge. At stake was the future of the Church, and not just the Vatican. Now, the conflict would pose an even greater challenge.

 

8

Attack on the Reform

The Theft of COSEA's Secret Files

It is Sunday, March 30, 2014. Daybreak is just a few hours away and St. Peter's Square is still deserted. In one of the most closely guarded areas of the world, something unpredictable happens in the wee hours of the night. Thieves, against all odds, defy security and break into the pontifical palaces.

The deepest silence reigned over the Palace of the Congregations, in Pius XIII Square, directly opposite the colonnade designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The gatehouse by Colonnade 3 was locked. Gaspare, the trusted Sicilian custodian, had gone home for the weekend, like the other employees and the cleaning personnel. With the exception of a 353-square-meter home, the residence of Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, and a one-bedroom apartment rented to a peaceful retiree, the four-story building was used entirely for store and office space, including the office of the Congregation for the Clergy, the Congregation for Catholic Life, and the Congregation for the Holy Life. The 781 square meters on the fourth and last floor of stairway D were reserved entirely for the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See, the reference point for the inspections Francis had initiated into the Roman Curia. Here the auditors worked elbow to elbow with the COSEA members. This was where most of the confidential documents were kept. This was where the Coordinator of the Commission, Secretary of the Prefecture Vallejo Balda, had his office. It was the symbolic center of Francis's revolution.

The thieves entered the building and the offices of the various congregations using a blowtorch. They went from floor to floor, cracking open every safe they found and stealing the money inside. In general they found not more than a few hundred euros per office. The Congregations and the Prefecture only kept enough money on hand for petty cash. These sums were quite modest, disproportionate to the type of action that was under way. The thieves behaved like professionals. They knew where the safes were located, knew how to open them in the least time possible, and knew how to easily force any door they might come across.

It is what the thieves would do immediately after the break-in that the investigators would find unusual and surprising—a deliberate decision that seems to provide the correct key for interpreting this disturbing nocturnal intrusion.

Once the burglars had entered the offices of the Prefecture, they did not limit themselves to identifying the safe, opening it, and taking the money. They also broke into the room that had several armored lockers. They pinpointed one locker in particular and forced it open. While from the outside the lockers looked identical, the criminals knew exactly which one to open. In opening the heavy armored doors they found no money or precious assets but confidential documents, kept in order in just a few dozen files.

This was not just any crime. In an unprecedented action, the burglars made off with part of the secret archives of the COSEA Pontifical Commission. This was a serious act that risked compromising the Commission's efforts. What did the files of the Pope's inspectors have to do with the few hundred euros in the various safes?

The intrusion was discovered the next day. The Vatican gendarmerie went into action and the Italian police forces were notified. In a fairly unique occurrence in the world, police forces from two countries launched a joint investigation. The building where the burglary had taken place belonged to an extraterritorial property indicated in the Lateran Pacts. Not only did the Palace belong to the Holy See, but—although it was located right outside the Leonine Walls—it was considered for all intents and purposes a part of the Vatican City. The interior of the property is within Vatican territory and thus the investigation was the province of the gendarmerie. Outside, on the adjacent streets, the Italian investigators were in charge. They checked dozens of videos captured by surveillance cameras in the neighborhood. The police tried to reconstruct the chain of events. The burglars—there were two or three of them—may have entered through the main door, but there was another theory that the investigators entertained at first: the intruders might have come in through the basement, having reached the Palace of the Congregations through one of the many tunnels that connect the buildings of the Vatican. While the theory sounded bizarre, it was in fact plausible. From the cellar of this building you could reach various destinations: the offices of the twin building, where other congregations had their headquarters, or the offices of the IOR, or even the Apostolic Palace and, on the other side, Castel Sant'Angelo. It was maze of tunnels, open-air corridors, covered and uncovered passageways, stairways and elevators (mostly dating back to the world wars in the first half of the twentieth century) that, for someone who knew them well, made it easy to move around sight unseen. It was a parallel world that was an apt metaphor for the Apostolic See, divided as it was between what takes place on the surface and is spread through official communiqués, and that which is consummated in secret rooms. It is an underground world that runs underneath the streets of Rome, upon which thousands of unwitting tourists and pilgrims tread every day. And it was no coincidence that the IOR—the impenetrable bank of the popes—had a storage area with confidential archives in the basement of the Palace of the Congregations, a fact known to very few.

When the investigators went down to the basements, however, they found everything in order, starting with the many dark limousines of the various embassies to the Holy See parked in the garage. The storage areas of the Congregations and of the IOR had not been touched. The corridor that leads to the Apostolic Palace was closed. It would have been difficult for the burglars to go through a tunnel to reach the storage area: the place looked impenetrable, and was known to be under surveillance by many security cameras. At this point, the most realistic theory was that the intruders had entered through one of the main doors, on the side that faces Pius XII Square. But the lock on the door was working and showed no signs of tampering. Did this mean that the thieves might have had the keys? There was no other explanation. This doorway was the obvious entry point, since it was near the staircase leading down to the storage room where the confidential files were kept.

At the Vatican, news of the burglary spread quickly and created unrest and dismay. The members of the Commission were of course among the first to be informed. They were surprised, shocked, and frightened. Zahra was in London on a business trip. He was on the phone all day with his trusted men to hear every development of the investigation. By Monday afternoon, among the various theories raised by the police, the most credible seemed to be a targeted burglary. No one thought it was possible that all those safes had been broken into only to steal a few hundred euros. Who would be so clueless and stupid as to commit a burglary in one of the most guarded places in the world for such meager loot? The true objective—some of the investigators thought—was the papers. The other items stolen looked more like a setup to throw the investigators off the scent.

And why would anyone want to steal the documents? Someone might have been interested in knowing their contents in order to map the works of the Commission—or maybe the objective was to remove some of them to slow down the works of the men closest to the Bishop of Rome? The burglars were certainly well informed. They knew the place perfectly, had the keys to open the doors, and had brought along the right equipment. And of course, they knew exactly which armored locker to force.

There was yet another theory, the worst of those being explored by the investigators, but one which would gradually become more plausible: the burglary might have been a criminal message, a thinly veiled warning to those who were bringing change. As if to say, between the lines, “We know where you keep your archive. We can go there when we want. We know and we can find everything.”

From that day on, the psychological pressures on the COSEA commissioners increased. They felt increasingly vulnerable and exposed. The intimidation theory would receive preliminary confirmation a few weeks later by the leaders of the Holy See.

Both Francis and Cardinal George Pell, who a few weeks earlier had become head of the Secretariat of the Economy (the new structure that the Pope wanted and that will be described in the following chapters) received the news of the burglary with the same interpretation: the action should be understood as a warning to those who were carrying out the most delicate inquiries; to those who were offering the Pontiff the tools for revolutionizing the Curia. Jorge—as the eight hundred priests of the Buenos Aires diocese called him when Francis was still the Archbishop of the Argentine capital and as his friends and closest prelates still call him—has a mild and unflappable character, but he had never expected a move like this.

Sindona's Letter to Threaten Francis

This was not an isolated episode. In those same days, troubling information crossed the desk of Father Mark Withoos of Melbourne, the personal secretary of Cardinal Pell, regarding strange movements by people around the Domus Australia, home of the powerful cardinal who now headed the Vatican Economy. It seemed that Pell was being followed, but it was hard to know why. Father Withoos reported the news to his superior, who urged him to be cautious.

A few days later, on April 10, 2014, an unsigned letter arrived in the Prefecture from London: a single sheet of green paper with eleven lines handwritten in cursive. The first sentence quoted the motto of Anonymous, the powerful online hacker community that stages spectacular actions to denounce corruption and financial shenanigans throughout the world. “We do not forgive, we do not forget. Wait for us!” The letter began with the sentence, “The outsiders are coming in from the outside … Pass this [message] to the Pope and to all the interested parties: the game is up.”

Though the letter was hard to interpret and could have been a prank, after the burglary the Vatican was on high alert. The sentence “The outsiders are coming in from the outside” seemed to refer to the recent break-in at the Palace of the Congregations. The letter was forwarded to the personal secretary of the Pope, Alfred Xuareb, whom Francis had appointed Secretary General of the Secretariat for the Economy and his representative for dealings with COSEA. Xuareb had a talk with Withoos. Nothing like this had arrived in recent years, but the two men, refusing to be intimidated, downplayed the importance of the letter. “We have nothing to hide. We're not going to play the game of someone who wants to frighten us. Our job is to help Francis.” Their approach was commendable, but the individuals operating in the shadows had a few more surprises up their sleeves. The war had just begun.