Pope Francis and the Vatican Deep State

When Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became pope in March 2013, it seemed promising that he was from what he, as Pope Francis, would call “the peripheries.” His election was expressive of the universality of the Church in a world where over two-thirds of Catholics now live in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And, as a relative outsider to the Vatican, he seemed just the right person to oversee a bureaucracy in need of major reforms. 

The various departments of the Holy See had operated with little oversight during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Their method of governing was to leave the internal affairs of the Vatican almost entirely in the hands of trusted subordinates. Sometimes the confidence placed in those subordinates was well merited, but as the old saying goes: “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” Some departments became little fiefdoms. In the financial area, some very unsavory characters were quick to spot and exploit vulnerabilities.

When Pope Francis took office in 2013, he was immediately confronted with a new scandal in the Institute of Religious Works (popularly known as the Vatican Bank) where there had already been scandals enough to delight novelists and filmmakers for years. It was encouraging that the new pope acted right away to appoint a commission (on which I served) to investigate the troubled institution. Though we had full powers to examine all records and question anyone, we were stonewalled at every turn by bank officials. To get a sense of what was going on, I and another commissioner interviewed nearly every one of the bank’s 115 employees, but we found that assurances of confidentiality from the pope himself could not overcome their terror of speaking frankly.  

Some months later, when Pope Francis brought in Cardinal George Pell to reform the entire financial system, the Australian prelate was shocked to learn there was no centralized oversight of Vatican finances. One of his first steps, therefore, was to hire a respected external auditor. But Pell had not reckoned with the power of the Curia. As soon as the auditor, Libero Milone, began to look into the finances of the powerful secretariat of state (which at that time controlled a large proportion of the Vatican’s assets), he was fired by Cardinal Giovanni Becciu, who as sostituto was the highest-ranking member of the Curia next to the secretary of state.  

Becciu continued to resist Pell’s efforts until Pell was obliged to return to Australia to defend himself against charges of abuse of a minor. To this day, Becciu has never explained the purpose of large sums of money he sent to a detective agency in Australia at the time Pell was being investigated by authorities there. Pell was convicted and served over a year in prison before the trial court’s ruling was overturned by the Australian High Court for lack of sufficient evidence. Becciu was ultimately convicted of financial crimes by a Vatican court, but not until 2023.

By the end of 2014, problems in various departments seem to have made Pope Francis aware that not even an absolute monarch is immune to the problem that Henry Kissinger described in a famous 1968 essay on “Bureaucracy and Policy Making,” namely that any leader’s decision-making power is significantly limited by the bureaucratic culture that is charged with implementing policy. The pope instituted a process for the preparation of a new constitution and devoted his Christmas address that year to what he called “Diseases of the Curia.” 

Thereafter, it seems Pope Francis largely abandoned thoughts of internal reform and turned his attention outward. Like his predecessors, he relied on trusted advisors and gave them broad discretion. The new constitution that he commissioned finally appeared in 2023 but did not supply mechanisms to address the accountability deficits that continue to render the Holy See vulnerable to financial misconduct and other abuses. The only feature of the constitution that attracted much attention from the press was an expansion of opportunities for lay participation. Ironically, however, laymen have often been the foxes in the financial chicken coop.

Today, the Holy See is in dire financial straits, with income and donations down, a huge deficit now estimated at $87 million, and no realistic plan for a way forward. At the end of last year, Pope Francis announced that the pension system was not in a position “in the medium term” to guarantee its financial obligations to employees. Undoubtedly those ominous facts will loom large in the next conclave. Given the composition of the current group of cardinals eligible to vote and the shift of the world’s Catholic population to the Global South, it seems likely that the cardinal-electors will be disposed to continue the emphasis Pope Francis placed on being a church for the poor and of the poor. But they may also be looking for a pope who will personify the Church as both Mater et Magistra.

When St. Pope John XXIII’s encyclical by that name appeared in 1961, the late William Buckley greeted it with an article titled “Mater, si; Magistra, no.” He was concerned lest the Church as Magistra stray from her role as moral witness into lecturing the world on policy matters where she had no special authority. But under current circumstances, my guess is that the next conclave will be looking for someone who will teach with clarity and consistency on matters of faith and morals, who will have a heart for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable, and who will finally attend to the conditions in the Vatican’s own household that so often impede the Holy See from being a transformative presence in a world groaning for salvation. Someone who, like John XXIII, sees the Church as both mother and teacher.