Vaticangate: the Pope's Season of Discontent

More: The UK's Guardian now reports that Italian newspaper La Republica has a dossier prepared by three cardinals whom Benedict assigned to investigate Vaticangate. Factions within the church's Vatican leadership are described including one "united by sexual orientation". Apparently quoting from the secret report, the Italian daily says some officials had been subjected to "external influence" by lay persons with whom they had contact of a "worldly nature" that violated the sixth and seventh commandments according to an inside source. The paper calls it simply, blackmail. The cardinals' report describes private meeting places in and around Rome including a villa outside Rome, a sauna in a Rome suburb, a beauty parlor in city center, and a residence used by a provincial Archbishop. The Vatican refuses to officially confirm or deny the existence of the report, but says the news reports about its content are creating "a tension opposite of what the Church wants" prior to the conclave of cardinals who will elect a successor. Pope Benedict resigned on the day he received the two volume report from Cardinals Julián Herranz, Salvatore De Giorgi, and Jozef Tomko. Rumors of a gay network within the Vatican have circulated for years, but this is the first time the existence of a homosexual cabal has been linked to the resignation of a pope.

{19.2.13}Like any big bureaucracy despite its lofty connections to the spiritual realm the Vatican is riven by serious internal disputes. Pope Benedict alluded to these with his statement that, "...hypocrisy disfigures the face of the Church". Many thought he was referring to the sex abuse scandals that have wounded the universal Church, and which he did little to root out when Cardinal John Ratzinger was the Vatican's dogmatic enforcer as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Actually, the rivalries and hypocrisy are much more mundane than individual priests' violations of sacred trust, and probably contributed to the aging Pope's decision to resign an office normally held until death. He is the first pope to resign in 600 years.

When Benedict's personal butler, Paolo Gabriele stole boxes of correspondence and documents from the Pope's desk, he put his hands on correspondence from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò who was tasked with budgetary reform in Vatican City. Viganò was locked in a battle with the Pope's second-in-command, Cardinal Tarciscio Bertone. Archbishop Viganò asked the Pope for help, claiming Bertone was blocking financial overhaul. Bertone wanted to remove Viganò because he was receiving bad reviews in the press for his management style. Pope Benedict sided with the powerful Bertone and Viganò was sent to the ambassadorship in Washington, DC.

Gabriele's leaks, for which he was prosecuted, provide the public with unprecedented insight into the workings of an institution that is both religious and big business. The light cast into the shadows is not flattering to the Holy See. Vatican City is a hermetic bureau staffed with fusty, turf protecting bureaucrats seemingly obsessed with byzantine Italian politics. In the correspondence there are allegations of corruption and systemic dysfunction similar to those plaguing secular governments. Viganò complained of contracts awarded at double the cost charged on the outside, and he attempted cost cutting measures, but was only rebuffed by the powerful Cardinal Bertone. Bertone also thwarted papal efforts to make the Vatican's books accessible to outside auditors, an unprecedented step towards transparency. Cardinal Bertone, considered an outsider by senior denizens of the Italian city-state, worked diligently to consolidate his powers as the Vatican's Secretary of State. Benedict is not revealed as the reformer he hoped to be, but rather as a weak manager with little media or leadership skills. He will be remembered for his resignation, leaving his successor to struggle with a seemingly endless and damaging sex abuse scandal of global proportions.

Apparently Gabriele's theft was a misguided effort to get the Pope's attention to the serious "degeneration" he saw confronting the Holy See. The investigative reporter who received the documents wrote a bestselling book based on the information, "His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI". Gabriele was tried and convicted, but the pope pardoned him in December. The Vatican's response to the leaks was to augment its public relations operation by hiring a former Fox News correspondent and member of Opus Dei, an ultra-conservative Catholic cult. Their pitch was to portray Gabriele as a grandiose simpleton and use his public trial as evidence of the Vatican's new openness. The pope now has a Twitter account, but Cardinal Bertone who presides over the Vatican Bank, is still in power despite the unorthodox revelations.