The pope called on Saturday to continue the reform of the Vatican justice and to strengthen cooperation with foreign judicial institutions in the fight against financial crime.
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François recalled that the Vatican has for several years been engaged in bringing its judicial system into line with international “good practices” in the field of financial crime repression.
This enterprise will “intensify to facilitate and accelerate international cooperation between the Vatican investigative services and the counterpart institutions of other nations,” he said.
“It now appears urgent to identify and introduce, in the form of specific rules or memoranda of understanding, new and more incisive forms of cooperation, as requested by financial market supervisory bodies at the international level”, added the sovereign pontiff.
He was speaking, in the presence of the Italian Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, on the occasion of the inauguration of a new judicial year for the Vatican City State Tribunal, created in 1929.
The promoter of justice – the equivalent of a prosecutor leading the legal action – recognized that the Vatican justice could accuse slowness and meet a “resistance of apparatus” within the city-state, without providing details. .
This resistance “does not prevent intense judicial activity” marked in January by “heavy sentences” pronounced in the trial of the fraudulent sale of real estate of the Holy See, noted Gian Piero Milan.
In this case, a former president of the Institute for Works of Religion – IOR, the official name of the Vatican bank – and a lawyer were sentenced to nearly nine years in prison for money laundering and embezzlement.
“A tangible sign of an evolution of the pontifical judicial system” in the fight against economic crimes, the Vatican has received six letters rogatory from foreign countries [l’Italie, l’État de Sao Paulo, au Brésil, et la Pologne], forwarded 13 [à l’Italie, à la Grande-Bretagne, à la Slovénie et à Jersey] and ordered the seizure of 105 million euros in total, detailed the magistrate.
Vatican justice is currently investigating a real estate scandal which could also lead to a trial: the opaque purchase circuit of a luxury London building by the Secretariat of State [gouvernement central du Vatican], which allowed Italian intermediaries to claim juicy commissions.
Since then, the Holy See has decided to transfer the financial and real estate assets of the Secretariat of State to another administration.
In addition, the Vatican court is currently called upon to judge for the first time sexual abuse committed in the ecclesial framework, and to examine the alleged attempt of certain executives to cover up the case. Neither the Pope nor the promoter of justice mentioned this procedure in their speeches on Saturday.