A priest was arrested last week in a scheme to bring $26 million into Italy illegally for a financier. The “priest” has a very odd background indeed. It’s all financial. He became a priest at 35 and seems little interested in doing the work of the Lord, preferring money-laundering apparently. Corruption at Vatican Bank has been going on for decades and at least one person, Banco Ambrosiano Chairman Roberto Calvi was murdered because of it.
Of course, the question now is just how honest the new pope Francis was when he vowed to simplify and reform any shady dealings in the Vatican: because not even he likely has any idea just how deep this particular rabbit hole goes”¦ or what will be revealed when the latest criminal thriller involving a priest, a banker and a spook reaches its climax.
I believe that Pope Benedict also tried to reform the Vatican Bank, or pretended to, at least. Perhaps the Vatican Bank is so mobbed up that firing everyone in charge of it wouldn’t work because of what would invariably come to light, things the Catholic Church cannot allow to be made public because of the damage it would do to them.
All my life I kept trying to go up in society. Where everything higher up was legal. But the higher I go, the crookeder it becomes.” – Michael Corleone in Godfather 3, which was about Vatican Bank corruption