In the meantime, at the Apostolic See, there was meeting after meeting. Zahra realized that if the waters were not calmed it would only benefit the defenders of the status quo. On January 6 he requested and received an audience with the Secretary of State. The meeting had two objectives: to receive the requested information and to lower the tensions.

  Parolin is a priest from one of the poorer parts of Latin America, and he had been the Apostolic Nunzio to Venezuela. He is a simple man, spontaneous and sincere. But he was in the stalwart offices of the Curia. Zahra is a businessman who understands numbers. Both of them shared Francis’s policies, but their personalities could not have been more different and the series of misunderstandings and incidents made dialogue between them quite difficult. Zahra went in with a strategy. Barely forty-eight hours after the meeting he held out an olive branch to the Secretariat of State: he wrote to Parolin a long summary of their meeting so that it would remain on the record:

  Dear Monsignor Parolin:

  It was a pleasure to meet with you on Monday and I wish to thank you for finding the time to see me. It was an honor to be of assistance to you in helping our Holy Father in this stimulating process of reform to benefit our Universal Church. I wish to provide you with some feedback on some of the various points we discussed during our meeting:

  … 4.) Accounts of the Secretariat of State. We received your response to our request regarding the accounts only this morning. The contents of your letter definitely cut in half our efforts to consolidate the accounts. The Prefecture has confirmed that it does not have copies of these financial statements or other partial information on the dicasteries mentioned in point 1 of your letter, without which we are unable to do our work. In the case of the Bambino Gesù hospital, the last statement that the Prefecture received is dated 2006. I am attaching a letter that Mr. Profiti sent to the Prefecture regarding these accounts.8 It seems like an endless carousel. We cannot close our assessment of these accounts, unfortunately … I repeat that we are working on these very inspiring reforms and it is normal to encounter severe opposition and resistance. I know that you and I are both determined to proceed in line with the will of the Holy Father in the most fluid way possible. It is clear that not everyone understands the seriousness and urgency of this task … and I entreat you to find a solution that will be beneficial to the delicate work we are both conducting. I will be back in Rome on January 20, and I can make myself available for a meeting should it be necessary. Rest assured that I support you fully in your difficult mission.

  My best wishes, Joe9

  The Color Purple

  During this same period, Parolin received the auditors’ request for an explanation of the budgets they had rejected. It was a seven-page critique of the financial documents: “There is a general sense of inertia, with no clear signs of change or responsibility for careful management of the patrimony of the Holy See and without concrete actions to contain costs.” Regarding the patrimony, for example, the request was made for a “required, but missing, planning of property maintenance jobs, greater efficiency in the rental area, and clarification of the contract awarding process.” The budgets had to be redone, particularly the line items on financials and human resources. Until then they would remain blocked:

  The redoing of the employee expenses line item, keeping in mind the freeze on hiring, turn-over, the replacement of retirees, overtime, promotions, and limitations on raises in 2013 (or 2012) to cost-of-living hikes.

  The Secretariat of State, APSA, and the Governorate finally chose to collaborate. They responded to all of these questions and sent in the revised budgets just in time for the January 14 meeting of the group of cardinals in the Prefecture.

  While data and information was coming in on the budgets, there was still little movement on the documentation requested from the Secretariat of State for the audit. On Saturday, January 11, Zahra was forced to approach Parolin. He asked once again for the financial statements of the bodies that report to the structure he headed. The Secretary of State was under pressure, but Francis remained undeterred. And the next day Parolin received important confirmation of the Pope’s unconditional trust in him. During Mass, at the Angelus, Parolin was named as one of the nineteen prelates who would be made cardinals by Bergoglio at the Consistory of February 22. This marked a significant changing of the guard at various Congregations. As a new cardinal, Parolin wrote one of his first emails to Zahra:

  Dear Mr. Zahra, Dear Joe,

  Thank you for the congratulations you sent me on my appointment as Cardinal. It is one more responsibility and challenge … purple is the color of martyrdom … pray for me! I am very pleased to send my regards and my blessings to your family. I have received your two earlier emails and I thank you warmly for them and for the meeting that preceded them. I wish to assure you of my complete willingness to work together in pursuit of the dispositions of Pope Francis. It seems to me that the most urgent questions are listed under points 4 and 5 [the request for financing of COSEA]. As for 5) tomorrow I will speak directly with the Holy Father and I trust that the thing can be quickly unblocked. As for 4), I am perplexed, because I do not know exactly how to recover the documentation you need (especially because of the tight deadline). Tomorrow I will bring the matter up again with the Substitute. If you have no objection, Mons. Balda can contact me directly to see how to proceed … We will try to find the time to meet on the occasion of your next stay in Rome and have an update on the situation. Thank you for everything. Let us place everything in the hands of God and ask him to help us to act always according to his will and for the greater good of the Church.

  With my warmest regards, Pietro Parolin

  But the situation was not as simple as the Secretary of State would have it. Forty-eight hours later, Zahra sent him this reply:

  It seems that the question of gathering financial information from the Secretariat of State is far from settled. Last night I received the financial documents from Mr. Profiti, who to my surprise is saying in his letter (attached) that he had sent the communication to the Secretariat. I also refer to the dicasteries indicated in points (1) and (2) of your January 4 letter. The Prefecture of Economic Affairs does not have this information or else [the information is incomplete]. Now we are writing directly to these dicasteries even if we would not be surprised to find this information already available at the Secretariat.

  I now refer to the items in my January 3 letter [regarding the bank accounts of the Secretariat of State]. Your reply to my letter does not refer to these two items. You are aware that we need this information to complete the whole financial picture of the Holy See. Naturally I respect the fact that there might be confidential accounts at the Secretariat, but what I am asking for is information on these other accounts. You can understand how difficult my job is and you are aware of the resistance I am facing in fulfilling the wishes and the mission of the Holy Father. Your intervention with the managers to help us in the work we are carrying on would be most appreciated.

  With my best wishes, Joe

  The only person who could break the stalemate now was Francis, as was stated nakedly in the weekly status report of the McKinsey consultants:

  Secretariat of State, status:

  • Received a letter from the Secretariat of State confirming that none of the financial information requested is available.

  Next steps:

  • Receive guidance from the Holy Father on the unshared accounts.

  • Keep in touch with Mons. Parolin.

  Parolin had never given too much credit to COSEA or to the Commission on the IOR. In an interview published in the daily newspaper Avvenire in February 2014, he stated:

  The Curia is a reality of service, not a center of power or control. There is always a danger of abuse of power, large or small, that we have in our hands, and the Curia has not and does not escape from this danger. “But ye shall not be so,” as the Gospel warns us, and on this Word, so demanding but so liberating, we seek to model our activity in the Roman Curia, despite limits and flaws. I would like to emphasize that while a reform of the structures is needed, it will not be enough unless it is accompanied by a permanent personal conversion. The commissions? They have a limited term and a job to “refer,” that is to say, their purpose consists in submitting to the Pope and the Council of Eight Cardinals suggestions and proposals in the framework of their competence.10

  It was only thanks to the intervention of Francis, at the urging of Zahra, that on January 30 the Commission received a twenty-nine-page file of answers—incomplete—regarding the Holy See’s tangled financial web. Something had finally broken. The laypeople on the Pontifical Commission, in this last phase of their work, could sense a crumbling of the opposition thanks to the Holy Father’s intercession. A harmful and mutual distrust began to insinuate itself among them.

  In the meantime, Francis was reflecting. When he has to make painful decisions, he regroups in private to find strength and focus. He prayed in his room, a simple environment in its furnishings and decorations: a crucifix, a statue of Our Lady of Luján, an icon of St. Francis giving mercy and hope, and a statue of St. Joseph sleeping.

  The Curia as a whole deserved to be admonished. Once the budgets were unblocked, the entire community had to share Francis’s concerns over the financial future of the Church, and he would have to impose with force, if necessary, the longed-for changes that were only on paper so far. There was a growing risk that the erosion of the patrimony would become unstoppable. On the one hand the economic crisis was striking the richest Catholic countries, reducing their generosity to the Church. On the other hand, in the Vatican, despite the arrival of Francis, expenditures kept going up. And while all of this was happening behind closed doors, faithful pilgrims continued to fill St. Peter’s Square, unaware of the hard work it would take to turn the Pope’s dictates into reality.

  Francis realized that he needed to act immediately, taking drastic measures if necessary. So he decided to intercede mainly on the question of personnel, not only because all of his appeals to take greater care in hiring and assigning jobs had been ignored, but especially because personnel measures more than any other would change the daily perceptions of the people who lived and worked inside the walls. Drastic human resource measures that would make everyone understand that the situation was serious and that the Argentine Jesuit meant what he had promised.

  The Holy Father summoned Parolin and immediately ordered the application of emergency measures to the entire Apostolic See. It was a turn of the screw. On February 13, 2014, the Secretary of State sent a memo indicating all the cuts that had to be made. In the document, sent to all the cardinals who headed dicasteries in the Curia, Parolin referred to the crisis, and called for the following:

  The immediate adoption of measures that will help contain expense items concerning personnel so that in this difficult moment of economic crisis the application of these decisions will contribute, in general, to guaranteeing the maintenance of the whole community of work at the service of the Holy Father and the Universal Church.

  Bergoglio urged greater mobility between departments, and he imposed a freeze on overtime, on the renewal of temporary contracts, on new professional positions, on promotions, and, of course, on hiring. When a person retired, “the employees in our work force”—Parolin advised—“will not fail to shoulder generously the activity no longer being performed by their colleagues.” But the ultimate goal was still remote. “How I would like a Church which is poor and for the poor,” Francis had said without guile on March 16, 2013, at his audience with the media. In the Curia there were many who now remembered those words and contrasted them to the notorious remark of Monsignor Marcinkus, the head of the IOR during its worst scandal, who often quipped, “You can’t run the Church on Hail Marys.” With that he dictated a mind-set that would dominate a dark chapter in Vatican history, a mind-set that persists in some corners of the Curia today.

  10

  The War, Act II: The Revolution of Francis and the Rise of Cardinal Pell

  The Revolution of Francis

  On February 21 and 22, 2014, Francis celebrated his first Consistory, where he appointed nineteen cardinals. Meanwhile, during moments of reflection and prayer, he defined the final details of the reorganization of the state. Among the papers he brought with him into his room at Casa Santa Marta, there was a six-page document that the COSEA Commission had prepared and delivered on February 18. The title was “Proposed Coordination Structure for Economic-Administrative Functions,” and it contained a series of suggestions for revolutionizing the small state.

  It was a tense and difficult moment. Earlier in the month, on February 3, Francis had also received the final report on COSEA’s works, with observations on the critical failures and major risks they had come across. The tone of the report was unsparing:

  Final proposals to present to the Holy Father …

  1. A lack of governance, control and professionalism lead to high risks at APSA. 92 recommendations for addressing those risks have been identified … COSEA proposes to involve the adequate juridical authorities wherever particular findings require this.

  2. A concrete recommendation for each commercial activity and a proposal for the future organization of the Governorate have been prepared. The summary report will also include a qualitative analysis of the benefits and downsides which a tax on income and sales (VAT) in the Vatican State would bring about.1

  On the morning of Sunday, February 23, St. Peter’s Square was filled with pilgrims. The cardinals who had gathered here less than one year earlier—at the Conclave that beneath Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel had elected an Argentine Jesuit as the next Pontiff—were back in Rome. Francis had carefully prepared the homily that he would read during the Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, where he would be facing the nineteen brother cardinals he had just appointed.

  He spoke to them forcefully: “A Cardinal enters the Church of Rome, my brothers, not a royal court … May all of us avoid, and help others to avoid, habits and ways of acting typical of a court: intrigue, gossip, cliques, favoritism and partiality.” A brief pause, and then the successor of Peter repeated his exhortation for an end to the infighting: “May all of us avoid intrigues … May we love those who are hostile to us. We are required not only to avoid repaying others the evil they have done to us, but also to seek generously to do well by them.”

  His message of peace was meant to ease tensions as well as to introduce the dramatic move he would be presenting the next day to the Council of 15 (C15), the body created by John Paul II to audit the Vatican’s finances. It was a touchy situation. Once the Consistory was over, the cardinals of the Council would stay behind in Rome to discuss the 2014 budgets that had been blocked by the auditors. The documents had just been revised, and the Pope in person had ordered the elimination of unnecessary outside consultants and imposed a hiring freeze to reduce personnel costs. If the cardinals did not approve the budget now, the Holy See’s activities could grind to a halt. While they were well aware of the situation, not everyone realized that a new super-dicastery was about to be created and that they themselves would be pushed aside. Bergoglio had prepared this new development along the lines indicated by both COSEA and the C8.

  The confidential meeting of February 24 would go down in history and I was able to hear it documented in a digital recording. After decades of stalling, the most important reform of the Curia in many years was about to be announced by the Pope. The cardinals were sitting in the room, waiting to hear the news.

  The Establishment of the Secretariat and Council for the Economy

  Francis was the first to take the floor, making his big announcement immediately in his typically blunt and direct manner:

  During the Consistory I decided to make this dicastery for finance, the Secretariat of the Economy, and today I left the establishing document with the Secretary of State. This morning I signed the motu proprio, I spoke with Cardinal Pell, whom you know, and I asked him if he would be the head of this dicastery. The head, I said … I don’t know if he will be a Secretary or President, the terminology has to be studied, it’s written down but I don’t remember it … I am aware that for him this is a deminutio capitis [reduction of power], because he is the head of a church. He is leaving that church to be a banker, which is a deminutio capitis, but he said without hesitation that he would do it. I thank him very much. I signed it with today’s date, in collaboration with the Secretariat of State and bearing in mind the unique nature of the administrative bodies. For example, the Governorate is not the same as the dicastery for the Causes of Saints, and Propaganda Fide also has a special nature because of the donations it receives … I wanted to say personally to the members of the Council of 15 that now there will no longer be 15 cardinals but rather 8 bishops and cardinals and 7 laypersons.

  After the Holy Father’s statement the cardinals applauded, but Parolin silenced them with a gesture of his hand. A new dicastery, the Secretariat of the Economy, was being created and the Council of 15 was being suppressed. Or rather, it was being replaced by a twin body that would be called the Council for the Economy, on which seven of the fifteen participants would be qualified experts from the professional world who would serve not as simple consultants but as voting members, on equal footing with the religious members. Francis was now making concrete and clear to the Church hierarchy the rebalancing of religious and laypeople that had been studied for months by COSEA and the consultants of Promontory and McKinsey. This was a radical change: for the first time a group of lay officials was being allowed into the closed and inviolable world of Vatican finances.