Emperor Palpatine--er, Pope Benedict resigns

[Gravdigr]

[tw]

From the Washington Post of 15 Feb 2013:

Pope struggled to lift sacred secrecy of Vatican finances
The arrests over the past six months of Palumbo and the 34-year-old lawyer, Simone Fazzari, highlight one major source of the scandals and power struggles that observers say contributed to Pope Benedict XVI's historic resignation this week - the murky world of Vatican finances. ...

Last month, Italy barred its own banks from doing business in the Holy See, citing a lack of transparency by the city-state's financial apparatus that has routinely declined to release data on accounts held there by church bodies, clergy, foreign embassies and lay entities related to the Vatican. The move cut off credit card processing at Vatican commercial sites including the Sistine Chapel, ...

That followed a series of Italian money-laundering investigations, including one that led to the 2010 seizure of nearly $30 million worth of Vatican Bank holdings kept outside the Holy See.

Evidence suggests the outgoing pope sought to shed light on the dark Vatican books, but that effort yielded even more controversy. The former president of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was forced to resign in May, alleging he was fired for getting "too close to the truth." Last year, other documents leaked by the pope's butler and other sources revealed the depth of the internal tug of war over financial transparency, with Vatican reformers pitted against traditionalists who appeared to believe the church should answer only to a higher power.

On Friday, the pope backed a decision by a commission of cardinals to name Ernst von Freyberg to head the Vatican Bank. ... However, Italian commentators were quick to question why the choice was not left to the incoming pope.

"It seems like an attempt to force the situation, not to leave the new pope an option," said Massimo Franco, author of "The Crisis of the Vatican Empire" ... "I find it quite strange that this is the last major act of the pope." ...

In the 1980s, Banco Ambrosiano, a financial institution largely owned by the Vatican Bank, became embroiled in a money-laundering scandal related to the Sicilian mafia. In June 1982, Ambrosiano's former chairman, Roberto Calvi - dubbed "God's banker" ... - was found hanging from London's Blackfriars Bridge in a death that was ruled a homicide and has yet to be solved. ...

In December 2010, however, Benedict took a landmark step toward transparency, issuing a motu proprio, or papal letter, forbidding money laundering and the financing of terrorism. More importantly, for the first time, he established an independent Vatican watchdog, the Financial Intelligence Authority.

Why would this cause traditionalist to force the Pope out? These traditionalist apparently even ignored rampant pedophilia. Why does Papal reform cause a Pope to resign? Who really is running the Catholic Church? How corrupt is it?