The new leader of the Catholic Church will inherit a financial mess that Pope Francis spent much of his reign trying to fix
Even on a deathbed, Pope Francis did not stop following up a vibrant campaign that was distinguished from his rule: reforming the troubled financial affairs in the Vatican. On February 27, on the thirteenth day of the ink at Jimili Hospital in Rome suffering from fatigue and bronchitis, the ink revealed the formation of a high -level committee dedicated to collecting donations to help the chronic budget deficit. Francis launched the Funds Foundation as a maneuver aimed at increasing the demands by senior officials in Korea, his extensive administrative arm, that the 1.3 billion Catholics leader in the world stopped his career to reduce deep spending. The bureaucrats who were made in the recent Pope’s movements in Drakconian: Since 2021, he cut the salaries of the 250 Cardinal Cardinal three times. In 2023, he prepared the rich housing subsidies for elite employees, and last September for the first time in decades, the Vatican demanded under a strict schedule to achieve a “zero deficit” system.
When Pope Francis died at the age of 88 on Easter on Monday in his modest apartment in the Vatican, his courageous campaign took great steps, but she stopped the promised land.
This writer began covering the accusation of the righteous Pope at creation. In early 2014, I traveled to Rome to obtain a direct vision of all the new financial guards bars and the disciplines that Francis had installed, as well as the flow of business experts who called all over the world to help him. When Francis took office in the previous year, only all that involves how the Vatican dealt with money that needs to be repaired: the huge gap and the constant height between revenues and expenses; The leadership dominated by clerics lacks experience in accounting and investment; And the reputation of a scandal. The stigma of corruption, or at least inefficiency, remained from the Panco Ambrosiano case in the early 1980s, when the financier was deceived by Roberto Calvi the Institute of Religious Works, also known as the Vatican Bank, in Kabir costing ior $ 250 million and imposing a large part of his exhibition.
Days after his organization collapsed, the corpse of Calfa was found suspended under the BlackFriars Bridge in London; British courts have not been able to determine whether the cause of death was suicide or murder. Calvi’s “friend” charts that headed the bishops, Paul Marminkos, who met him in the mid -eighties of the last century at the IOR house in the Gothic Gothic prison built by Pope Nicholas VI. The six -feet length of Marincos, which is called the Gorilla, has risen in the Vatican from the base of the power as the guardian of Pope John Paul II. During our meeting, he made the chain chimney and installed for hours about how IOR was the largest money maker in the Vatican as a matter of courtesy “spread” between the small interest that the Jesuits paid and other religious orders for their deposits, and the high rates that have acquired it to reshape these funds to European funds.
On Ambrosiano, Marincos insisted on the charges of “guaranteed” the bank’s debts on behalf of the IOR, and the rap was Boom, and that the Vatican paid only $ 250 million to protect his image. Shortly before, the Italian government had brought down a year arrest warrant for Marsenkos to the Vatican lands, a liberation that may make his mood. “I may be a poor banker,” he told me that he is not qualified; “But I am at least not in prison.”
Francis soon showed that in money, it was a new type of leader
My newly appointed business leaders were approved to help the Pope’s attack. In the background, they linked a dramatic meeting in the summer of 2013, when Francis for the first time treated his field, which he considered decisive – a chronic stumbling role as a commercial institution. The ink has appointed a team of seven business leaders from all over the world as a committee to identify problems and recommend details of a wide reform. Among them is a French executive headed by the Assets Department of the American Consultative Fund, the CEO of the German insurance company ERGO, the head of the largest bank in Malta, and the former Prime Minister of Singapore.
Instead of keeping the Conakab in the Apostolic Palace, the Renaissance was offered where Pontifes traditionally received visitors in a high style, Francis entered the distinguished guests in a conference hall that was not described in the Casa Santa Marta, a five -storey guest house on a four -star branch scale where Pontif decided in one case. There is no art or religious things that decorate the walls. The Pope was associated with a simple white and Metal Cross, and this type of “I am” very administrative “Boss” approach, whose invitations might have realized from handling their bonds.
A fluent Italian speaker, he stops frequently so that the translator can repeat his words in English, former Cardinal told Benus Aires that in order for his spiritual message to be reliable, the Vatican resources should have been reliable as well. The Vatican did not overcome the practices formed by centuries of secrecy and conspiracies, either to manage its money efficiently, or issue a coherent accounting from where the money came from and where it was spent. The new Pope stressed that his basic mission was to help the poor and deprived. The Vatican budget, which cares from small surpluses to the yawning deficit, undermined this goal by inhibiting charity. “When fat in management is unhealthy,” he declared, adding that he wanted a smaller and effective organization that would prove “self -sufficiency.” Strong rules and protocols are required.
The ink anger has particularly sparked that managers continued to pay abuses on fixed price contracts, when companies should have eaten excess bills. From now on, a warning, when the Vatican gets a project for a project where the contractor is legally responsible for the additional costs: “We don’t pay!” Like the Great CEO, the Pope drew a clear strategy. One of the participants also described the matter: “Let’s reap the money for the poor.” Francis ended with rowing, “I trust you. You are experts. I want solutions to these problems.” Pope Francis was not one of the mini -lead devices that were studying the budgets of public, but he was a major expert in setting clear goals and choosing the necessary specialists to meet them – dependent on real bankers, not amateurs in the Marcinkus template. Then, without eating questions or extension of compliments, leave the room.
In financial affairs, Pope Francis proved the greatest holy interests. But the Vatican budget problems are still ongoing to this day
After the meeting, this prominent council helped designing a radical new structure directed by religious leaders who run the machine for centuries, but managers and experienced advisers from all over the world. Record the new KMPG system to install the internationally accepted accounting principles to replace the insane quilt of the standards, check store books and facilities in the small nation, Deloitte & Touche and Spencer Stuart, respectively, and recruit new talents at the Vatican Bank. Pope Francis also established a new body called the Economy Secretariat, which for the first time is central to all power under one agency and a leader. Today, the highest official is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who spent a long profession in administrative positions of Catholic universities and prominent institutions in the church.
It brought more brighter supervision a new discipline of fugitive spending and enhancing investment returns, but it did not end the long history of the Vatican of actions. In 2014, the Cardinal, who held the position of the second official in the State Secretariat, was a plan for another shaded Italian entry to buy shares in a building in London. After that, the Secretariat took full control of the property at a very amplified price of about 400 million dollars, and then sold it a few years later at a loss of $ 150 million. An investigation was launched in 2019 that many millions of euros had initially disappeared and self -dealing. But this time, the authorities imposed difficult justice. The Vatican Courts sent eight people, including Cardinal, to prison, and imposed fines on two others.
Soon after taking power, Pope Francis ordered the freezing of employment that is still in effect to this day. In fact, its strategy of reducing the workforce succeeded through attrition. But the Vatican is still haunted by the burden of the funded pension plans that he inherited. The financial world in the Vatican is divided into two parts. The first is the state of the city, the sovereign country with an area of 110 acres and which generally runs a budget on the scale of a medium -sized municipality, and the Swiss Guard empires the “GENDARME” police force, and it generally generates an operational surplus due to excellent sales.
The second is the Holy See or Korea, the sprawling bureaucracy that does everything from the detective work to naming the new saints to operate the equivalent of embassies in three dozens of countries to operate nine “gatherings”. It is always in deficit – again, to a large extent across what its legions owe to the retired. In recent years, Curia spends between 800 to 900 million dollars annually, and operating a structural deficit of more than $ 50 million. And that is after allocating tens of millions of dollars in Peter Bence. This money collected in the baskets of assembly passed through the Church corridors from Sydney to Warsaw on Sunday, which represents the feasts of the saints Peter and Paul in late June. It is once in the world of believers, the wealthy and the poor alike, sends money to the Vatican collectively.
The late ink always wanted Pence Peter only to its original purpose is to support the poor. It was a goal that he cherished, but he did not live to achieve it. However, Pope Francis has worked on a miracle near transparency, efficiency and integrity most likely the most famous Byzantine angle in the financial world. From his hospital bed in its last days, the ink continued to fight the Vatican Foundation for Reform, which raised the management of voice funds as a tool to fill the role of its model and its names, St. Francis of Assisi, Italian dread in the thirteenth century devoted to the breeding of the failure. Only if he shares the rare talent of Francis for the work strategy, the task will be completed.
This story was originally shown on Fortune.com
2025-04-23 09:00:00
