October 23, 2019

Reports have emerged detailing the movement of Vatican money through slush funds across Europe — and a Vatican investment of more than $250 million into luxury London apartments, brokered through a ­financier who profited even while the Vatican’s investment tanked.

Italian media also report that Vatican officials contemplated ­investing hundreds of millions in Angolan oil fields — money that comes mostly from an annual collection intended to support papal charities. Per the Italian reports, prosecutors have also found evidence of embezzlement, fraud, abuse of office and money-laundering among the Vatican’s upper echelon of managers.

A first round of indictments in a Vatican City state court is expected to be handed down soon. Red-hatted princes of the church may eventually be implicated.

All of this, of course, sounds like a plot recycled from

“The Godfather Part III.”

Financial scandal at the Vatican is nothing new. The Vatican’s official bank has faced repeated crises since it was founded in 1942, and the bank itself was created to curtail fiscal irregularity.

The figure who made the most progress on reining in Vatican graft — George Cardinal Pell — now sits in an Australian prison, after he was convicted of sexual abuse in a trial many Australian ­jurists found deeply suspect.

https://nypost.com/2019/10/23/the-vaticans-new-corruption-scandal/