Sainthood price-tag leaks stir Vatican fury

What is the price of sainthood? Vatican officials made a startling discovery shortly after Pope Francis was elected in 2013: outside payments were routinely made to a small office in the Holy See to boost the prospects of a candidate for canonisation.

The overall cost to the Vatican involved in creating a new saint can be as high as €500,000 — and in one case hit €750,000 — because of the lengthy historical due-diligence involved in analysing a candidate’s suitability, including whether he or she has performed any miracles.

But those external contributions from individuals or groups — worth up to €40,000 — helped speed up the process. The trouble is they were often kept off the books and unaccounted for by the so-called postulators who worked in the sainthood office.

Vatican officials were forced to take the dramatic step of freezing the postulators’ accounts after they refused to hand over any documents.

The episode stands among the most damaging revelations from two books based on leaked documents — Avarice by Emanuele Fittipaldi and Merchants in the Temple by Gianluigi Nuzzi — published this week, which have heaped further indignity on the Roman Catholic Church as it tries to rebuild its credibility.

The publications, rife with vulgar details of avarice and mismanagement, have raised questions over the pope’s ability to deliver lasting change to the city state’s notoriously murky governance, especially on the economic front.

They have also brought back a scent of scandal to the Holy See, reminiscent of the last days of Pope Benedict XVI’s tenure, when the German pontiff’s own butler was detained and tried for leaking confidential information. That scandal was known as “Vatileaks” — and this week what seemed to be its sequel burst into the open.

“Those who are less than enamoured of the current pope . . . are hoping its main effect will be to stop his reforming pontificate dead in its tracks,” said Robert Mickens, editor-in-chief of Global Pulse, the Catholic website.

Those who are less than enamoured of the current pope . . . are hoping its main effect will be to stop his reforming pontificate dead in its tracks

“But Francis is not Benedict XVI. [He] will not allow financial corruption at the Vatican or careerist power struggles in the Roman Curia to sandbag his efforts to change the culture and refocus the vision of the Catholic Church around the world.”

Since many of the excesses revealed by the two authors predate the implementation of Vatican financial and economic reforms, begun under Benedict XVI and aggressively pursued by Francis, they do not undermine the Argentine pontiff’s image as a reformer.

Secret recordings of the pope, unearthed by the authors, disclose Francis’s dismay at the corruption under his watch, and his determination to try to get a grip on things.

But confidence in his ability to clean up such a corrupt and opaque system may nonetheless have been rocked, leading to a furious Vatican response to the books, including the threat of legal action against the authors.

On Monday, a senior cleric with ties to the conservative Opus Dei group and a lay woman who formerly worked at Ernst & Young were arrested by Vatican police for allegedly leaking confidential documents to the authors.

Besides revelations over lobbying and price-tags on sainthood, other damaging details include the naming of clerics with the largest apartments, in contrast to the modest 50 square metre residence chosen by Pope Francis when he took office with a mission to refocus the Church on the poor.

William Levada, a cardinal from California who was once the highest-ranking US clergyman and recently faced a drink-driving arrest while on holiday in Hawaii, had the most expansive apartment, spanning more than 500 sq m.

Overall, the Vatican’s real estate portfolio was estimated to be worth €2.7bn, and, in many cases, housing was rented out to friends and acquaintances at prices well below market value.

One former Vatican official was accused of using funds destined for a Vatican-run children’s hospital in Rome to pay for a €23,000 helicopter ride to southern Italy and the refurbishment of his own flat.

The Church isn’t at all ‘poor’ and in many ways it moves more as a merchant bank

Both books revealed that the charity fund known as Peter’s Pence — which includes collections from parishes around the world — was mainly used to cover expenses in the Vatican administration, with only some 20 per cent given to charitable deeds.

The Holy See also confirmed that it was investigating an Italian banker who allegedly used the accounts of APSA — an office that manages financial holdings and real estate — for personal trades, as revealed by a Reuters news agency report. “The Church isn’t at all ‘poor’ and in many ways it moves more as a merchant bank,” said Mr Fittipaldi.

As Italians digested the details, the new “Vatileaks” scandal captured the front pages of most of the leading newspapers and websites for most of the week.

On Friday, Pope Francis’s recent comments to a Dutch street newspaper dominated the talk. They sounded like a scolding of his scandal-ridden clerics at the end of a difficult week. “A believer cannot speak of poverty and the homeless but have the lifestyle of a pharaoh,” he said.