Sheriff defends law. He brings everybody into line. And honest people is happy. This is what could happen in an ideal world. But many discontent the arrival of a sheriff. Honest people feel in peril: they work behind the curtain, they know that the only way to change the balances of a «corrupted» place [...]
One year ago – it was the 30th of December 2010 – the publication of the Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio for the prevention and countering of illegal activities in the area of monetary and financial dealings was considered one of the most important news. The Motu Proprio extended to the Holy See the [...]
The last document released by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace was delivered to the participants to G20. Some of the proposal contained in the document were also part of the agenda of the summit. For example the tax on financial transactions, called a “Tobin tax” after the name of its [...]
Within the next 4th of September, the Vatican Authority for Financial Information will be finishing a report to deliver to the GAFI – the International Financial Action Group against money laundering – and to the financial organisms of European Union. It will be one of the steps toward the enrollment of the Holy See [...]
We are now living the fall of the false Gods. Benedict XVI delivered an important meditation at the beginning of the October Synod of Bishops for the Middle East. The meditation addressed the “false divinities” that govern modern times. «Let us remember all the great powers of the history of today. Let us [...]
A suicide. An hospital going to collapse. The “Vatican bank” that drives the the recovery plan. The Vatican. It seems to be a Da Vinci Code-like spy story. In fact, maybe there is a more complex game to be played, long beyond the wish of the Vatican State Secretariat to recover San Raffaele [...]
«Kyllä kansa tietää», «Yes the people know». This sentence has marked the history of Finnish politics. His author, Veikko Vennamo, was a talented orator. He shocked the Finnish political establishment by founding a populist party at the end of Sixties. It was called “Landsbygdspartiet” (the Party of the Countries) and it gained the [...]
A persecutory judgment. That is how many people, inside and out the Vatican, considered the sentence to 4 years’ imprisonment and to 1.5 million euro fine to Antonio Fazio, former governor of the Bank of Italy. Fazio was compelled to resign in 2005, because of the alleged role of the Bank of Italy [...]
Vatican State is still not in the “white list” of the virtous states for money laundering legislation. After the Monetary Convention of 17 December 2009 between Vatican City State and the European Union, and the new Vatican legislation for the prevention and countering of illegal activities in the financial and monetary sectors, Holy [...]
Would it be possible to eject the Holy See from the international organizations? This not such a new idea. In 2007, The Economist - English weekly which is widely read in government foreign offices – ended an article about the Vatican diplomacy with this advice for the Holy See: «It could renounce its special [...]