• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1428 0

is a canon lawyer, former secretary of the Signatura, and president of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, the office that audits the balance sheets and budgets of other curial departments. As he began the process of drafting a new constitution for the Legion, De Paolis had to locate its assets. Benedict was gambling that it was better to salvage the organization than to dismantle it, despite its many disillusioned ex-members and the opinions of six U.S. bishops who banned the Legion and Regnum Christi from their dioceses. The pope ordered an investigation of Regnum Christi. Benedict began prodding the Legion to compensate Maciel’s victims, especially older ones who no longer had legal recourse. Jeff Anderson sued the Legion in Connecticut on behalf of Maciel’s son for allegations of incest committed on U.S. soil. The Vatican has no mechanism for compensating victims per se, but the pope wanted the Legion’s coffers to do that; he was, in a way, acting like a judge pushing two parties to settle a dispute—a wise use of power. Bishop Ricardo Watty Urquidi of Tepic, Mexico, one of five apostolic visitators who had investigated the Legion for the Holy See, told reporters in Mexico on May 18, 2010: “We need, then, to take care of [Maciel’s] victims, as much inside as outside the Legion, and to compensate them for damages. This is something we all agreed on, and the pope accepted—just as he has been doing, and bravely so.”4

The Vatican monarchical system has no separation of powers, nor a bona fide court system for criminal prosecution or property rights. Benedict in theory had the power to punish or call down cardinals, though to do so would violate the unwritten laws of apostolic succession. Benedict seemed ill-suited for the hard choices of reform during the debacles of 2010, as exemplified by his refusal to accept the resignations offered by two Irish bishops for their complicity in harboring predators. But his design that Legion assets be used to compensate victims, if achieved, would set a precedent. The Legionaries as a religious order are subject to papal obedience. To punish Sodano would be a greater act of justice.

The Vatican cannot be reformed without an independent court system to supplant the tribunals that cater to bishops. An international commission of Catholic constitutional scholars could craft a system to codify children’s rights, the preservation of parishes, and oversight of bishops. The alternative is a recurrent spectacle of parish-closing protests, while victims’ lawyers target diocesan assets, notably in Europe, with more shame heaped on the Vatican.

The financial accountability of bishops is an issue that seems destined for more activity in the civil courts. Corporation sole—the bishop owns all—is an anachronism prone to abuse. When American parishioners have sought rights as beneficiaries to their churches, judges have largely bowed to canon law, as in the Ohio decision that gave ownership of St. James Parish in the town of Kansas to Bishop Leonard P. Blair of Toledo. The Ohio court allowed Bishop Blair to pay his lawyers from the parish bank accounts, close the church, demolish it, and put the land up for sale. And the parishioners’ recourse? A sovereign monarchy that bars them from sitting in the court, since there are no open arguments anyway. The Apostolic Signatura and the Congregation for the Clergy make a mockery of justice. As American judges learn how the Vatican system works, a few of them, perhaps even in Ohio, may emulate Mr. Ponsor of the federal bench in Springfield, Massachusetts, in recognizing religious property as a more complex issue of democratic jurisprudence.

VATICAN BANK IN TROUBLE AGAIN

The Institute of Religious Works, or Vatican Bank, has 40,000 account holders from among the members of religious congregations, and cardinals sit on its board of directors. Church officials over the years have said it should not be considered a bank, but rather a massive trust to manage the capital of religious orders, relief organizations, and church charities, getting