Transparency vs. Money Laundering: Catholic Church Fears Growing Vatican Bank Scandal

[sysop]

A new scandal threatens to engulf the Catholic Church and this time the focus is money. Senior Vatican officials are battling over the future of the Vatican bank. While some would like total transparency, dubious transactions from the past and present could harm the Church's image.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...842140,00.html

[pmoseley]

Question: In which of the following do you find Catholic priests widely practising all of: money laundering, mafia involvement, murder, corruption and paedophilia?

1. Germany.

2. Sicily.

3. Prisons.

4. The Vatican.


Answer: The Vatican.

(Germany only has widespread child abuse in the Catholic Church, Sicily is not known for widespread paedophilia and prisons do not yet harbor many Catholic priests.)

[Eleos]

That a pious Mafia don should choose to shun shady offshore tax-havens to benefit the one earthly bank where his store of treasure may give him the chance to receive the interest in heaven, is surely a win-win situation.

The various European monetary authorities must have enough work to do monitoring Greece and the other nations of the Eurozone, to now start interfering in an institution where their strictly temporal authority denies them competence.