Pope cleans house at bank with new cardinals
Pope cleans house at troubled Vatican Bank, names new cardinal advisers
By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press 9 hours ago
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>> >VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Francis made another move to
clean house at the troubled Vatican bank on Wednesday, naming a new roster
of cardinal advisers to replace the ones who were in place during its
latest brushes with scandal. >Only one cardinal from the previous
commission overseeing the bank's operations, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran,
survived the cut. >Francis on Wednesday named four others to round out
the commission, including his hand-picked secretary of state,
Cardinal-elect Pietro Parolin, and Francis' close friend Cardinal Santos
Abril y Castello. >The other members include Cardinal Christoph
Schoenborn, archbishop of Vienna, and Cardinal Thomas Collins, archbishop
of Toronto. >On Feb. 16, 2013, just days after announcing his
resignation, Pope Benedict XVI confirmed the existing members of the bank's
supervisory body for another five years. The members included Benedict's
longtime deputy and secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who was
widely blamed for many of the Vatican's administrative shortcomings during
Benedict's papacy. >Francis has now essentially undone Benedict's
decree, relieving Bertone and the other commission members of their jobs as
he moves forward with his reform of the bank, formally known as the
Institute for Religious Works. >Over the summer, Francis named a trusted
friend, Monsignor Battista Ricca, to fill a vacant supervisory position and
appointed an independent commission of inquiry to look into the bank's
activities and legal status. >Those decisions were taken in the days
surrounding the July 1 ouster of the bank's top two managers and the arrest
of a Vatican accountant with several Vatican bank accounts on charges he
plotted to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) into Italy from
Switzerland. The accountant, dubbed "Monsignor 500" for the types
of euro notes he purportedly favored, is currently on trial in Rome on the
smuggling charge and is also under investigation in his native Salerno, a
city in southern Italy, in a money-laundering case involving his Vatican
accounts. >Prior to that affair was the controversial 2012 ouster of the
bank's then-president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. The board accused Gotti
Tedeschi of incompetence and failing to do his job. >And before that, in
2010, Italian police seized 23 million euros from an IOR account and Rome
prosecutors placed the IOR's then-president, Gotti Tedeschi, and general
director Paolo Cipriani under investigation for alleged violations of
anti-money laundering norms in conducting a routine transaction from a
Vatican account at an Italian bank. The money was eventually unfrozen.
Gotti Tedeschi was subsequently exonerated as a suspect. Cipriani hasn't
been charged. >In 2012, under pressure from the Bank of Italy, U.S. bank
JPMorgan closed its IOR accounts. And in December of 2012, again under
pressure from the Bank of Italy, Deutsche Bank Italia halted its 15-year
term providing electronic payment services to the Vatican, leaving the tiny
city state cash-only for months. >The five-member Cardinal's Commission,
as it is known, names the lay board of the Vatican bank and its top two
general managers and makes sure they adhere to the bank's mission to
administer money for works of charity. >___
Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield
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