Vatican department heads meet to discuss budget deficit

September 20, 2019 CNA Daily News News Briefs 1 Print

Vatican City, Sep 20, 2019 / 11:50 am (CNA).- The heads of dicasteries and Vatican City State institutions met Friday to discuss finances and how to reverse a reportedly rapidly growing deficit in the Holy See’s budget.

Matteo Bruni, Holy See press office director, confirmed to CNA that the meeting took place Sept. 20 among heads of dicasteries of the Roman Curia and of institutions connected to the Holy See and Vatican City State.

According to the Wall Street Journal, in May Pope Francis asked Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, coordinator of the Council for the Economy, which oversees Vatican finances, to convoke the meeting to consider solutions and to “inform the respective heads about the gravity of the situation.”

The Holy See sustained a deficit of roughly 70 million euros ($77 million) in 2018, doubled from the previous year, according to Vatican officials, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The Sept. 20 meeting was intended to increase awareness of the issue among Vatican officials, many of whom are unaware of the gravity of the situation, according to Joseph Zahra, a Maltese economist who is a member of the Council for the Economy.

Zahra also said the Vatican will be releasing a financial report this fall, the first since 2015.

Vatican finances have been one of the major focuses of Pope Francis’ reform efforts, though he has faced serious setbacks.

Efforts began in 2013, with the creation of an investigatory commission to examine the Holy See’s administrative structures. Consisting of seven lay experts, one clerical secretary, and external consultants, the commission met from August 2013 to May 2014.

This work was later overshadowed when, in 2015, two former members of the commission were arrested for stealing and leaking confidential information about Francis’ papacy.

In February 2014, Pope Francis made his first major structural changes to the Roman Curia, establishing the Council for the Economy and the Office of Auditor General, an autonomous office with the power to conduct special investigations.

He also created the Secretariat for the Economy, appointing Cardinal George Pell as prefect, but that office is now vacant, as Pell returend to his home country to defend himself against charges of child sex abuse, of which he was convicted. The cardinal is appealing his conviction.

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Vatican sends leads into missing ‘Vatican girl’ to Rome prosecutors

June 22, 2023 Catholic News Agency 0
The moon was visible over St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican, on the morning of Oct. 12. 2022. / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA

Vatican City, Jun 22, 2023 / 04:10 am (CNA).

Vatican City’s chief prosecutor, who is investigating the 40-year-old case of a missing teenage girl, has shared information deemed “worthy of further investigation” with Rome prosecutors.

Vatican prosecutor Alessandro Diddi said June 22, the anniversary of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi’s disappearance, that his office “has collected all the evidence available” in the case of the so-called “Vatican girl.”

Diddi reopened investigations in January after Pope Francis gave him “maximum freedom of action to investigate [Orlandi’s case] on a broad scale without conditions of any kind.”

Emanuela Orlandi was the teenage daughter of Ercole Orlandi, an envoy of the Prefecture of the Pontifical House and a citizen of Vatican City State. Her disappearance on June 22, 1983, after leaving for a music lesson in Rome, has dominated headlines and been the subject of speculation for decades.

Diddi said Thursday he has interviewed people in charge of certain offices at the time of Orlandi’s disappearance 40 years ago, and the office of the Promoter of Justice has examined the material, “confirming some investigative leads worthy of further investigation.”

Relevant documentation was sent this month to the prosecutor’s office in Rome, he noted, “so that the latter can take a look at it and proceed in the direction it deems most appropriate.”

The chief prosecutor said his office will continue its investigation over the next few months, adding that they are “close to the grief of Emanuela’s family and aware of the suffering one feels at the disappearance of a relative.”

Diddi met with Orlandi’s brother, Piero, and the family’s lawyer, in April. According to Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, the meeting, requested by Orlandi, served as an occasion for Orlandi to “make his own statements and to offer any information in his possession to the file opened by the Vatican promoter of justice in January.”

Diddi clarified in an interview in April that his investigation is limited to the confines of Vatican City State. He said: “I enjoy broad autonomy, but for investigations on Italian soil I necessarily have to interface with the public prosecutor’s office of Rome and with the new prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi.”

The Vatican said in January the Emanuela Orlandi case was being reopened at the request of the family.

Public interest in the case was also rekindled last fall after the release of “Vatican Girl: The Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi” on Netflix.

The true-crime docuseries, which premiered on the streaming service in October 2022, featured interviews with subjects who proffer numerous theories about Orlandi’s disappearance, none of which have been substantiated.

In the final episode, the docuseries presents a theory that the Vatican was involved in some way in Orlandi’s disappearance, based on a new interview with a childhood friend of the missing girl. The Vatican denies having any role in her disappearance.

In 2019, the Vatican agreed to open two tombs in the cemetery of the Teutonic College, which sits on Vatican-owned property adjacent to the city-state, on the strength of a tip received by the Orlandi family that the missing girl’s remains would be found there.

The graves were found to be completely empty, and in an unexpected twist, Vatican officials discovered “thousands” of human bones — not Orlandi’s — in a previously unknown ossuary nearby.

[…]

1 Comment

  1. Just of think how much money would be saved by ending the destructive synods and all the other nonsense that goes on in the name of the Church these days. Perhaps someone at CNA would like to do the math for us.

    Reply

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