Vatican’s Star Witness Testimony in ‘Trial of the Century’ May Just Have Backfired on Pope Francis

Just when you think that the Vatican’s “trial of the century” against a cardinal and nine other defendants for various alleged financial crimes can’t get any more surreal, two developments pop out of the woodwork to prove you wrong. A hearing Thursday produced both a previously unknown, and unauthorized, recording of a phone call with … Read more

A Tough Week for Pope Francis

Every leader has stretches he or she probably would like to forget. Mid-August, for instance, was one of those times for US President Joe Biden, as the chaos of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan sent his poll numbers into a death spiral from which he still hasn’t recovered. For Pope Francis, though not quite on … Read more

Legal Tsunami May be Headed for Vatican Prosecutors in ‘Trial of the Century’

Somewhere out in the ocean right now, a small buoy is measuring wave direction and speed, along with barometric pressure and water temperature, feeding that data back to observatories. Even small upticks or downticks may signal the first stirrings of what could become a devastating storm. You don’t need special equipment, however, to detect warning … Read more

Vatican Staring Down The Barrel of $158 Million Deficit

According to an internal Vatican analysis recently presented to Pope Francis for a meeting with his department heads, declines in revenue due to the coronavirus pandemic will cause the Vatican’s annual deficit to balloon somewhere between 30 and 175 percent, depending on which of three scenarios, ranging from best to worst case, is realized. Under … Read more

Vatican Finance Guru’s Exit Suggests ‘Back to the Future’ Dynamic on Reform

It doesn’t take a genius-level systems analyst to conclude that Brülhart was simply fed up and decided to walk away. Logically speaking, it may be contradictory to call something both mystifying and utterly predictable, and yet that seems to be a near-constant when it comes to the Vatican’s handling of sensitive or potentially embarrassing news. … Read more