Merchants in the Temple (6 page)

•
One lay postulator offered to conduct an investigation even before opening a canonization process, on the condition that he receive an initial payment of 40,000 euros;

•
The printing press associated with one of the postulators listed above [Andrea Ambrosi] appears as one of the three print shops that the Congregation recommends to postulators.
15

Another one of COSEA's files concerns “expenses for a Spanish canonization managed by a professional postulator between 2008 and 2013.”
16
The compensation for the postulator was “28,000 euros, another 16,000 for his collaborator, one thousand euros for printing the material and the same amount for various expenses that bloated the costs to 46,000 euros,” as indicated in February 2014 to the cardinals on the Council and the Pope.
17

On Monday, August 5, 2013, at the explicit request of Zahra, and after the Congregation for the Causes of Saints had failed to provide any documentation, Cardinal Versaldi sent four letters containing instructions to freeze accounts at the IOR and APSA. The recipients of the letters were Cardinal Domenico Calcagno, President of APSA, and the lawyer Ernst von Freyberg, the head of the IOR. Versaldi also copied Cardinal Raffaele Farina, the Chair of the Pontifical Commission for Reference on the IOR, established by Francis in June, and its coordinator, Monsignor Juan Ignacio Arrieta.

Over at the IOR, at 10:11
A.M.
on the same day, the unusual freezing order issued by von Freyberg became operative, to the consternation of various employees. It would take the whole day to block the huge number of accounts: there were more than four hundred bank accounts in all. This was an operation whose dimensions were unprecedented in recent bank history. By six o'clock that day, not a single euro could be withdrawn from any account linked to canonization or beatification procedures. At the IOR, a total of almost 40 million euros was blocked.
18

Panic at the IOR

The next day, Tuesday, August 6, the situation became even more tense. At VISA-POS, the IOR office that handles ATM and credit card transactions, one bank official had hesitations. Stefano De Felici wanted written confirmation that the credit cards of a series of high-level clients had been blocked. He gave nine names to the Deputy General Director of the Institute, Rolando Marranci, highlighting the two most prominent names in bold:

Good morning.

On the basis of various communications that this office has received, the following credit cards linked to the accounts of physical persons are to be blocked. Here is the list:

I hereby request confirmation that I should proceed to block these accounts.

The measures had also affected the bank account of Monsignor Georg Gänswein, the former personal secretary of Benedict XVI, and now the prefect of the Pontifical House. Also blocked were the accounts of Antonio Marrazzo, postulator for the beatification of Paul VI, Giovanni Battista Montini; and of Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family. With the first moves of the Commission, there was already a risk of a diplomatic incident. To prevent matters from escalating, the general accountant of the Prefecture, Stefano Fralleoni, who had attended many of the international auditors' meetings and was now helping COSEA with its investigations, wrote directly to von Freyberg:

The provision for the temporary blocking of the accounts of postulators and single causes [for canonization] opened at the IOR and APSA should not be applied to the personal accounts of religious postulators and/or employees of the Holy See who meet the proper requirements to hold an account there.

The postulators were almost all religious, with the exception of two laypeople, the already mentioned Andrea Ambrosi and Silvia Correale. The only safe accounts were those held by religious people or employees who had the right and met the requirements for an account at the Vatican financial institutions. Unfortunately from the documentation examined I am unable to establish which of the four hundred accounts was immediately unblocked. In all probability, they included Monsignor Gänswein's.

Deputy General Director Marranci received the order directly from Fralleoni.
19

The accounts of Andrea Ambrosi and Silvia Correale do not seem to meet the normal requirements that exist for religious personnel or employees of the institutions of the Holy See. It is thus requested as a precautionary measure, and while awaiting the institution's clarifications of the modalities and origins of the amounts present in these accounts, that the temporary blocking of activities be extended also to the accounts held by the persons highlighted above, according to the same modalities as the accounts held by Causes.

Ambrosi had approximately one million euros in his three bank accounts at the IOR blocked. The Prefecture and COSEA demanded an explanation from him. Ambrosi defended himself in a letter he wrote to Marranci on August 20:

After being introduced by Cardinal Salvatore Pappalardo in around 1985, having engaged in the activities of a postulator, he [Ambrosi, referring to himself in the third person] was allowed to open a personal account, with the exact numbers 19878001/2/3. In the past thirty years there has been a flow into these accounts first of credit from the stakeholders in the various causes as well as donations from the parents of the undersigned and of his wife. The undersigned states that he has never performed professional activities in Italy, that he is not the holder of a VAT number, and that he has always attached to his Italian tax return a statement by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints attesting that he has always performed his activity exclusively for the above-mentioned dicastery. In all these years—almost 40!—the Italian tax authorities have never had any objections. The undersigned, while awaiting, with confidence but concern, the unblocking of his three personal accounts at the earliest, hereby requests that he be allowed to immediately come into possession of 80,000 euros so as to deal with economic commitments already made.

Ambrosi was perhaps the top postulator in the world. For forty years—together with his daughter Angelica and various other collaborators from the five continents—he had handled hundreds of beatification and canonization processes, from Pope John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli) to the Emperor Charles I of Hapsburg. Another interesting activity of the Ambrosi family is the printing shop it owns, which handles the documentation for most of the causes—Novas Res, located in Piazza di Porta Maggiore in Rome. It holds a kind of monopoly, despite the fact that the Vatican has a modern printing shop that could easily publish the prestigious volumes. Nova Res is also one of the three print shops officially recommended to postulators by the Vatican.

The postulator Silvia Correale also wanted an explanation, and requested an appointment with Fralleoni. The meeting was tense. She asked for the immediate unblocking of her account but in the process she gave away some telling insider details of what was really going on inside the Congregation for the Causes of Saints under the leadership of Cardinal Amato. Fralleoni wrote a summary of her remarks for Monsignor Vallejo Balda, in a confidential document to which I was given access:

The account in her name holds about ten thousand euros and she says she has no other bank accounts in Italy; therefore this is her sole source of income. She asks if it would be possible to unblock it, and says that she knows and has worked with the Pope and that he knows and respects her … The most interesting item to emerge from our conversation is the fact that the Congregation for Saints HAS STILL NOT NOTIFIED ANYONE AND HAS NOT REQUESTED FROM ANY OF THE POSTULANTS THEIR FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FROM THE PAST FIVE YEARS!!! In practice, they're doing nothing. This is also serious because, while speaking with the postulator Silvia Correale, I realized that the balance sheets don't exist … Maybe the Prefect [Amato], who turned 75 in June, is waiting to pass the problem on to someone else … Let me know whether you think we should proceed to unblock this single account. The postulator seemed honest and sincere to me. I think we could use her in the future to receive more interesting information about how the causes are handled. In the meantime the various other consultants et alia who should be getting money from the causes are starting to get angry … The postulator says that some time ago she had handed in a financial statement but the people at the Congregation did not want to put their seal on it. After that she said she didn't do them anymore and that … to do them now would take months.

Monsignor Vallejo Balda was shocked:

This is all extremely serious, what do you mean there are no balance sheets? This woman is handling more than 100 causes … how is it possible? This is one of the problems. We have nothing to say about her personal bank account but how is it possible that she has one at IOR [?] … I don't trust her … Let's talk about this tomorrow.

Fralleoni backtracked immediately regarding the woman's IOR account:

The fact of having an account at IOR is a delicate matter. The postulator brought up the question of her rights as a person who had worked continuously for the Holy See and was thus similar to an employee. And for her work she is paid about 4,000 euros a month (more than I get…). Therefore I will have to study carefully the rules and regulations of the Congregation to assess the situation.

In December 2013, COSEA gave instructions to unblock 114 of the 409 accounts. Ambrosi's money would remain frozen for a long time. He would receive a monthly sum that was sufficient for him and his loved ones to live on. Meanwhile, suggestions arrived from the consultancy firm on how to lend greater transparency to the financial activities of the Congregation and of the procedures for causes. But there were still pockets of resistance, and even standard accounting practices are still not being applied today. In other words, there seems to have been no improvement in the situation.

The Freemasons Could Infiltrate the Reforms

Oversight of the accounting practices of the Causes was creating irritation and discontent within the Curia. In early September 2013, the Catholic reporter Antonio Socchi was slipped a copy of the fiery letter that Zahra had sent to Cardinal Versaldi on August 3, asking him to freeze the accounts. A copy of the letter ended up being published in the September 6 issue of the newspaper
Libero
, which dedicated two pages to the story.

Who leaked the documents to the press? The goal was to discredit the security and confidentiality of the COSEA members. Francis feared unpleasant surprises, so he asked his personal secretary, Alfred Xuereb, also from Malta, to have a private talk with Zahra. Their conversation was very tense. Zahra realized that the Pontiff was “very worried.” Francis cared deeply about the commission's investigation, and he understood all too well that without an in-depth picture of the financial situation he would have to abandon his plans for a complete overhaul of the Vatican.

But the Pope's support was still unwavering. On the morning of Saturday, September 14, he welcomed all the members of the Commission to the Holy Mass that he was celebrating in the Santa Marta chapel. It was the day of the second session of COSEA. The suggestion that they attend the Mass had been made by Don Abbondi, the office head of the Prefecture, who was still not certain the invitation would be approved.

Only four days before the Mass, at the last minute, Monsignor Xuereb gave the go-ahead for the Commission to attend. The religious service that is held at the personal residence of the Pope is always very private and reserved to only a few people. By inviting them, Francis was confirming the esteem he held for the COSEA members as well as his attention to their work. This was a signal that encouraged Zahra, on the following Monday, September 16, to send the Pope two confidential letters. The first was a quick briefing on the investigations under way. The second letter was more delicate. He took up the issue of the leaked documents. The explicit purpose was to reassure Francis by pointing to a possible security flaw:

Your Holiness,

I refer to the concerns you have expressed over questions relative to the confidentiality and security of documents. I wish to assure you that we are taking all the necessary precautions appropriate to the utmost secrecy and security regarding the circulation of documents, including a dedicated network for cellular telephones, and a dedicated server for the exchange of emails and the use of passwords. The unfortunate incident of having a signed letter … being published in
Libero
on September 6 may be due to the fact that these letters were with every good intention attached to a letter forwarded by Cardinal Amato to all the postulators for the causes of saints scattered throughout the world. This increased the risk of this document spreading. Begging your forgiveness for having given any cause for concern, we are further tightening our security measures on the letters sent by our Commission, reminding the recipients of their utmost confidentiality.