Italian PR expert accuses Spanish priest of papal wiretaps

The saga began in 2012 with an earlier Nuzzi expose, peaked with the conviction of Pope Benedict XVI’s butler on charges he supplied Nuzzi with stolen documents, and ended a year later when a clearly exhausted Benedict resigned, unable to carry on. Both he and Mr Fittipaldi claim to show the forces arrayed against Pope Francis as he tries to liberalise aspects of the Church, and overhaul what is depicted as a financial morass, whose vested interests inside the Vatican have resisted previous attempts at house-cleaning.

“Merchants in the Temple”, by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi focuses on the commission Francis set in place to pry financial information out the Vatican fiefdoms that have been operating for centuries with barely any oversight.

Dubbed a “sex bomb” by Italian media, Chaouqui was part of a now defunct special commission (known as COSEA) set up by Pope Francis to advise him on economic reform within the Church – along with Vallejo Balda.

And as Nuzzi adds in the final section of his book: “So far Pope Francis” efforts to remove the Merchants from the Temple have been insufficient’.

In connection with the leak, the Vatican announced November 2 the arrests of two members of that Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Organization of the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See: Msgr.

Second, the Vatican police force arrested two people who were on the commission, a Spanish priest and a woman who served as a public relations expert for COSEA. Chaouqui was allowed to go free because she cooperated in the probe, the Vatican said.

The 33-year-old Chaouqui, who favors slim-fitting jeans and long, bouncy hairdos, cut a figure in sharp contrast to the usually more somber dress of the relatively few laywomen with roles at the Vatican.

The losses total 1.3 million euros ($1.4 million) and include the disappearance of 10,000 books, Nuzzi says.

Speaking Monday to Italy’s Repubblica TV, Fittipaldi said his book “doesn’t talk about Francis, but about a church that seems very distant from the mottoes of the pope”.

Vast amounts of stock from Vatican stores “mysteriously vanished into thin air”, Nuzzi says, citing a 2013 Ernst & Young audit. A more objective, serious investigation would better distinguish between the majority of Vatican financial dealings that are above board and those areas “to correct, ambiguities to be clarified (and) real improprieties or illegalities to be eliminated”. He writes for L’Espresso newsweekly, which has published a few of the most damaging leaks of Francis’ papacy, including most recently a letter by 13 cardinals warning Francis about his family synod.

Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic religious movement, expressed “surprise and pain” over Vallejo Balda’s arrest, who it described as belonging to a priestly society linked to Opus Dei.

Nuzzi describes the goal of the annual Peter’s Pence collection as being “to bring relief to the poor in fulfillment of the church’s pastoral mission and the goals of Francis”, which is true.

Tweets – which she claimed were written by a hacker – included one which said Pope Benedict had leukaemia, one which said high-ranking Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone was corrupt and one which accused a former Italian minister of being gay.

“The Pope’s works of charity for the poor are certainly one of the essential uses, but is certainly not the intention of the faithful to exclude the possibility that the Pope himself may evaluate situations of urgency and the way of responding, in the light of his service for the good of the universal Church”, Lombardi said. €400 million of a fund for charity allegedly has been used to pay the expenses of the Curia and the administration.

One of the most important questions now concerns the contents of the soon-to-be-released books.