Free Republic

ROME — Pope Francis on Tuesday imposed an Oct. 1 deadline for all Holy See offices and Vatican-linked institutions to deposit their assets with the Vatican bank. Francis’ decree follows his decision earlier this year to entrust management of all Vatican assets to one office — the patrimony office known as APSA — in a bid to end decades of mismanagement that culminated with a scandal over a 350 million-euro investment in a London property. Ten people, including former Vatican officials and external brokers, are on trial in the Vatican tribunal on finance-related charges related to the deal. The Vatican’s...

On May 17, I published an article in the Italian newspaper La Verità about pope Benedict’s abdication. A few days before, in a renowned Italian geopolitical magazine called Limes, Professor Germano Dottori had argued that Joseph Ratzinger’s 2013 abdication, and the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation in 2011, after a financial storm sold to public opinion as a “public debt” crisis, were the result of pressures on the part of Obama administration in the United States. According to Dottori, Obama was eager to dethrone Benedict XVI for two reasons. On the one hand, his presidency was close to...

"On flight from Rio de Janeiro to Rome" Journalists fired improvised questions at the Pope for one hour and twenty minutes. The Pope agreed to hold the press conference straight after take-off, despite how tired he was after an eventful World Youth Day week in Brazil. Francis surprised journalists with his willingness to answer all questions put to him, even those which touched on really thorny issues like the reform of the Vatican Bank (IOR), the Ricca case, the gay lobby, Vatileaks and even the content of the black leather bad he carried on to the plane which flew him...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis has indicated for the first time that he may make changes to the Vatican's scandal-ridden bank as part of a broad review of the Holy See's troubled administration. Before Francis was elected last month, many of the cardinals who went on to choose him expressed concern about the harm done to the Church's image by three decades of scandals at the bank, which Italian magistrates are now investigating for money laundering. A report last year by Moneyval, a European anti-money laundering body, found that the bank, officially the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR),...

JP Morgan Chase, one of America’s leading banks, has closed down an account held by the Vatican bank at its Italian branch office in Milan. Neither the American bank nor the Vatican bank (formally known as the Institute for Religious Works, or IOR) offered any public comment on the move. But officials at JP Morgan Chase acknowledged that the IOR account was closed because of concerns about the possible use of the Vatican bank for money-laundering.