Vatican City, Feb 12, 2019 / 12:00 am (CNA).- The Vatican’s general auditor has new statutes, conferred recently by Pope Francis, that will bring financial audits of Vatican offices into greater conformity with United Nations agreements.
With a Feb. 9 motu proprio issued the new norms for the Vatican’s Office of the General Auditor; they will become become effective on Feb. 16.
The general auditor oversees an annual financial assessment of each department, or dicastery, of the Roman Curia, the group of offices that assists the pope in his governance of the Church.
Signed by Pope Francis on Jan. 21, 2019, the new statutes describe general auditor’s office as the “Vatican anti-corruption body.”
The former statutes of the office were published on Feb. 22, 2015.
While the auditor had previously been charged with working in “full autonomy and independence,” the new norms call for the auditor to collaborate with the Vatican’s Council for the Economy, which is charged with approving the auditor’s annual audit procedure.
Despite the change, the Vatican has insisted that the new norms do not diminish the authority of the auditor’s office.
In a Vatican News op-ed Feb. 9, Vatican spokesman Andrea Tornielli, said the norms give the auditor more authority to review financial records than he previously had.
What is the guiding principle of the reform, then?
In the first place, the new statutes fulfill the Holy See’s international agenda by placing the auditor in the context of international law governing financial oversight. The statutes describe the auditor as the “anti-corruption authority,” a term that complies with the United Nation’s Mérida Convention, the anti-corruption multilateral legal tool the Holy See signed in 2016.
The Mérida Convention also provides some rules to control public procurements. The Holy See complies with those norms by giving the auditor the task to “review particular situations about: anomalies in the employment or attribution of material and financial resources; irregularities in assigning public procurements or in operating transfers or alienation of goods; acts of corruption and fraud.”
The issue of public procurements is crucial in the Vatican, where there is no market, nor private sector.
The statutes and rules of reporting harmonize the work of various entities involved auditing the Vatican finances. All of these entities are now given a specific and well outlined task.
The auditor is also requested to “inform the Council of the Economy via the review committee of the council, about mishandling it might find out,” and to send “a report to the Financial Intelligence Authority when there are grounded reasons to suspect that funds, goods, activities, economic initiatives or transactions are connected to money laundering or financing of terrorism.”
The auditor must also report the “the Vatican City State’s judicial authority every crime detected during its activity”.
The statutes also commit the auditor to “report every three month to the review committee of the Council of the Economy on its work done and ongoing.”
The statutes also regulate the activities of external auditors and subject them to clear oversight,
The issue of using external auditors has been a point of discussion since 2016. At issue was the question of whether, given that Vatican City is a sovereign state, and not a company, it is appropriate that its financial books undergo external auditing.
The Holy See’s sovereignty insists on the independent, albeit small, territory of the Vatican City State, which like any other independent nation has its internal jurisdiction and legislation, and is involved in international relations.
This sovereignty implies that the Vatican dicasteries are considered on par with the ministries of any other country – which includes a level of confidentiality in handling their budgets.
The discussion was about how introduce international accountability standards within a state system, finding a balance between the needs of a manager and those of a governor.
This discussion led to the new statutes. In a first phase, the Vatican financial reform marked certain discontinuity, and raised some issues. As a response, the reforming process was not halted, but was rather included in a wider framework, which involves the Curia and the Vatican City State.
The next step will be that of appointing a general auditor. Between 2015 and 2017, Libero Milone was the auditor, but he was fired after grave allegations of espionage and embezzlement.
In 2018, Vatican prosecutors informed Milone’s lawyers that a criminal investigation against him was closed and no charges were going to be filed.
[…]
So they are meeting on a problem that currently has good stats but not meeting on the presence of active gays in the clergy like the orgy incident in Rome and the two priests caught in a sexual act in Miami with each other last week and the male prostitute in the Milan area two months ago who avers having had sinful contact with 36 priests. But the meeting is about the largely gay area that is currently quiet…abuse of minors. Well that sounds like we don’t need consultancy help.
Does anybody have any information about what is happening to Cardinal Pell? There’s been blank silence for quite some time, and considering that there seems to be a fair amount of evidence that he is being railroaded, I’m concerned.
I wish I could help you out there Leslie. It seems that for some reason things have stalled. As far as I know though: the trial is still going ahead. I have heard him speak a few times and met him once. I have always had grave fears as to there being a fair trial. He said himself once that he doesn’t go making things up. He simply upholds what the Church teaches, come fair weather or foul. There are those who hate him for it.
Stephen in Australia.
I should have mentioned. There is an Australian journal of conservative opinion. The name of it is Quadrant. When in a newsagents; I was amazed to see an essay in it, written very recently by Cardinal Pell. The essay is titled – The Church in a Post Christian World. It is dated: September 12Th 2018. Search Quadrant and you will be able to see it. However, unless you subscribe, you won’t be able to read it in full just yet. The whole matter is of great concern. Hope this has been some help.
Stephen.
39 mnutes ago..ny times…Di Nardo, president of Bishops facing accusation of transferring molestor…..
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/09/12/us/ap-us-clergy-abuse-dinardo.html
Bergoglio’s synod on “the protection of minors” is a sham. As we all know, the problem is not pedophilia but massive homosexuality among 50% to 70% of all priests and the priest-bishop-Cardinal homosexual networks that are strangling the Church. Still less does the Church need another synod to talk rather than to act. Again, as everyone should know, it was Bergoglio who unilaterally destroyed the bishop sexual abuse investigation-and-trial proceeding that his own sexual abuse commission had strongly recommended. Since Bergoglio has doubled down on his delay-deflect-and-deny strategy with this cynical synod announcement, it is time for the DOJ and the Attorney-Generals in all 50 states to treat him and the American PervChurch for what they are: criminals and moral degenerates.
Paul, I don’t doubt that there are men who are priests and who are gay. There are a few I’ve met that I suspect lean that way. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they are faithful to their vow of chastity. You claim that 50 – 70% of priests are gay. From where do you get that statistic? I’ve been around priests all my life. My closest friend is a priest. I know he’s not gay and neither are the men I’ve known who are priests. Please tell me from where you get this statistic.
It might come from this much discussed and cited 2003 essay by Fr. Paul Mankowski, in which he states: “I would estimate that between 50 and 60 percent of the men who entered religious life with me in the mid-70s were homosexuals who had no particular interest in the Church, but who were using the celibacy requirement of the priesthood as a way of camouflaging the real reason for the fact that they would never marry.” Or perhaps from Sipes.
I think you are quite correct. The Bishop’s Conferences have no canonical authority at all. This is like a high school principal asking the Student Council to address the problem of incompetent teachers. Except that it doesn’t sound so obviously stupid.