The Vatican is facing yet another potential financial scandal this week with allegations surfacing that its payroll agency was able to change the names and account numbers after transactions were concluded.
The eye-popping claims come from Libero Milone, who was named the first auditor-general of the Vatican by Pope Francis in 2015 before being forced to resign from that position barely two years after his appointment. Politico has reported that Milone alleges that the Vatican had access to tools that could alter the international bank account numbers like a “skeleton key for money laundering.”
“I have a piece of paper which says that they can change the transactions—they can change the name—at any time,” Milone told Politico. Such a tool could have potentially enabled money laundering in a Vatican financial system that has faced accusations of corruption.
Experts the publication talked to deny that what Milone claims is technically possible. The Vatican denies all of Milone’s allegations.
Nevertheless, Milone, a former executive officer at the big four accounting firm Deloitte, has some credibility when it comes to accessing the financial problems of the Vatican, having been deep within the financial records of the ecclesiastical organization.
Indeed, Milone’s persistence in rooting out corruption purportedly cost him his job. He was forced from his position in 2017 by a high-ranking official in the Roman Curia (the Vatican bureaucracy), Archbishop Angelo Becciu, who accused Milone of spying on high-ranking churchmen. Becciu reportedly threatened to prosecute Milone unless he resigned.
All charges from the Vatican against Milone were dropped in May 2018. Milone ended up suing the Vatican for wrongful dismissal seeking with his former deputy, Ferruccio Panicco, 9.3 million euros. That case was dismissed by the Vatican City’s Court of Appeal in July. The 9.3 million euros currently would be worth about $10.8 million.
Milone’s claim, if proved true, could be potentially disastrous for the Catholic city-state. The Catholic news publication The Pillar described that scenario this way: “[The] Vatican would likely end up on an international financial black list of the darkest kind, frozen out of the international banking system; meaning, no money could come in or out of the city-state except in literal, physical cash.”
Pope Leo XIV, for his part, faces a perennial problem that has been the subject of a major Hollywood film and of attempted reforms by his predecessors. As the first American pontiff, he has an opportunity to provide an important outsider’s perspective in addressing the Vatican’s shady finances.
As Brendan Wilson, an adjunct professor at Notre Dame Law School, pointed out last year, the pope could employ a respected outsider accounting firm to audit the Vatican’s books. After financial transparency is fully restored, the pope could fundraise to fix the Vatican’s budget deficit through the generosity of the wealthy American church. A canon lawyer by training, the pope’s relative youth and experience in the Roman Curia, of which was previously Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, give him a unique opportunity to finally fix the Vatican’s broken finances.
The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment by The Daily Signal.
