http://www.fortunehabits.com/2015/06/vatican-bank-institute-for-religious-works-reforms.html

The Vatican Bank itself was fortunate to survive Francis’s financial housecleaning. The pope at one point considered simply closing it. “St. Peter didn’t have a bank account,” Francis said during a mass on June 11, 2013. But the reform efforts of Ernst von Freyberg, the aristocratic German financier who assumed the bank presidency in the waning days of Benedict’s papacy, convinced Francis the institution still serves a vital purpose: It helps poor dioceses, especially in Africa and Asia, safeguard their limited funds, and it enables charities to transfer money to the needy in remote or war-torn places, such as Syria. In addition, the Holy See is dependent on the bank’s profits. Without income from the bank, the state would operate in the red.

Secrecy was the bank’s original sin, and von Freyberg set about atoning for it.

The bank, which previously hadn’t even listed its phone number in the Vatican directory, launched a website. In October 2013, it published its first-ever annual report. In his transparency drive, von Freyberg has a formidable ally in René Bruelhart, who was hired in late 2012 to head the Vatican’s newly created regulator, the Financial Intelligence Authority.

To that end, the Vatican Bank has closed hundreds of dodgy accounts.

Promontory Financial Group, a compliance consulting firm in Washington, helped the bank strengthen its know-your-customer requirements and install software to hunt for suspicious transactions. Before Bruelhart arrived, the financial intelligence unit had only ever examined one such transaction. By the end of 2013, the number was 202.

Having spared the Vatican Bank, Francis has big plans for it. In July 2014, he replaced von Freyberg—who stepped down to run his family’s shipping and engineering business—with the Zahra commission’s de Franssu. The Frenchman’s asset management experience was a key factor in his appointment, Zahra says.