Sharing goods not communism but 'pure Christianity,' Pope says
- Apr 11, 2021
Three days after the preacher of the papal household called on Catholics to repent for the ways they are dividing the church, the Vatican secretary of state said the divisions are real and they are harmful.
If you stand on a balcony and chuck a brick over the side, and that brick ends up hitting somebody in the street, it’s no defense to blame the law of gravity. Similarly, if you build a PR bomb and take no steps to defuse it, you don’t get to blame the media for the blast.
A British judge has blasted Vatican prosecutors for making “appalling” misrepresentations to the court about their investigation into the Holy See’s investment in a London real estate deal, determining they don’t have much of a case against their key suspect.
For those who know him, and many do, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State and thus the top aide to Pope Francis, is not typically a figure who conjures up the term “daredevil.” Yet over the last few days, we’ve seen Parolin channel his inner Evel Knievel in three distinct areas.
Australian Cardinal George Pell, formerly the Vatican’s top official on financial affairs, said he believes the pope’s recent reforms signal progress, and called for additional competent laypeople to be involved in the process.
A new law that removes financial assets from the control of the Vatican Secretariat of State is a step forward on the path of financial reform, said Bishop Nunzio Galantino, president of Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See.
Pope Francis has taken away away the power of the purse from the Secretariat of State, traditionally the Vatican’s 800-pound gorilla, and transferred it to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), the Vatican’s central bank. At the same time, he beefed up the oversight role of the Secretariat for the Economy.
Pope Francis has formally stripped the Vatican secretariat of state of its financial assets and real estate holdings following its bungled management of hundreds of millions of euros in donations and investments that are now the subject of a corruption investigation.