Merchants in the Temple by Gianluigi Nuzzi

losses. The tangle of accounts opened at different banks was evidence enough. Fifteen years after the fact, four accounts for the 2000 Jubilee were still open. Of these, two were at APSA, where the Secretariat of State manages eight accounts altogether. One of them is listed as “Vatican Radio, Slovak newsroom,” with an ending balance of $134,000.
    Does the Pontiff have his own bank account? Decades have gone by without ever finding the truth. Various improbable theories have circulated, followed by halfhearted denials or even more imaginative reconstructions. It was not until the confidential papers photocopied by Paolo Gabriele, the butler of Benedict XVI, and published in my book His Holiness , that it emerged that Ratzinger, on October 10, 2007, had ordered the opening of account number 39887 at the IOR to receive from a company fifty percent of his royalties from more than 130 publications. 9 Large sums of money poured in the account, like the 2.4 million euros deposited in March 2010 by the Joseph Ratzinger Benedict XVI Fund.
    From the unpublished documents sent in early 2014 by the Secretariat of State for the bookkeeping audits, a truth emerged that no one had ever been able to verify. Each pope has his own personal bank account. In many cases, it has remained open for years after his death. The most mysterious accounts are in fact held by deceased pontiffs, with currency converted into euros, of course. In particular, the account of Pope John Paul I (Albino Luciani), who died in 1978, is still open. The account number is 26400-018, and it is held by “His Holiness John Paul I.” It has a balance of 110,864 euros. Who manages it?
    Thirty-seven years after his death, there are still two accounts in the name of Pope Luciani’s predecessor, Paul VI (Giovanni Battista Montini), who was recently beatified. From the documents that we were able to read, there is one account, number 26400-042, titled “Personal Account of Paul VI,” with a balance of 125,310 euros, and another account, 26400-035, with a balance of 298,151 dollars. Evidently, Montini preferred to diversify his accounts into different currencies, to avoid the need for damage control in the event of devaluations or financial crises.
    There is still no answer today to the delicate questions raised by the existence of these and many other similar bank accounts. If they are really held by deceased persons, the accounts should be closed. Yet they remain open, and in some cases quite a few years have gone by. How is this possible? Is someone moving money through them? An heir, perhaps? If so, what right did he or she have to keep an account at the IOR, where laypeople are not allowed to bank. These are all questions that for unclear reasons would not be conveyed to Monsignor Peter Wells, the Assessor for General Affairs of the Secretariat of State, or even to his superior, Monsignor Angelo Becciu, Substitute for General Affairs of the Secretariat of State, the last bastion of the old guard.

 
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    Handcuffs in the Vatican

    Cardinal Rambo Embarrasses the Curia
    The Peter’s Pence was not the only black hole in the Vatican finances. There were others whose measure was difficult to take because of the limited, even patchy data returned to the Commission for Reference on the Administrative-Economic Structure of the Holy See. What little documentation did come in was tainted or hard to interpret. The Commission had hit a wall. Even its most astute and swift moves were immediately obstructed by an equally intelligent and unexpected countermove.
    At the secret July 3, 2013, meeting, Cardinal Agostino Vallini had begged for the Holy Father’s indulgence, arguing that the irregularities in the Vatican finances were the result of ignorance rather than a deliberate cooking of the books. But there was nothing innocent about the misconduct of the men in charge of the Vatican finances. They suddenly turned into razor-sharp officials when it