Pilgrims gather in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican. Photo: CNS Room to improve for Vatican handling of financial crime
Moneyval, the European financial watchdog committee, said that while the Vatican has made progress in combatting financial crimes, its investigations into potential crimes committed by senior officials needs more fine-tuning.
The group, also known as the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism, released its assessment of the Vatican’s compliance with financial regulation standards June 9.
The 275-page report was published after experts from Moneyval conducted a two-week onsite inspection of the Vatican in October.
In the report, Moneyval said control measures enacted to prevent financial crimes such as money laundering and terrorism financing “have significantly improved in recent years” and that the Vatican has a “sound understanding” of determining risks.
However, it also noted that “cases which have received wide coverage in the media have also raised a red flag for potential abuse of the (Holy See/Vatican City State) system by mid-level and senior figures within the jurisdiction – insiders – for personal or other benefits”.
Moneyval recommended that the Vatican focus on spotting potential threats, “including those presented through abuse of the system by insiders”.
Search for Christian unity must start with love
While theological dialogue is important in the search for Christian unity, it cannot take the place of Christians simply sharing a meal, recognising they are brothers and sisters and loving one another, Pope Francis said.
“Together in love, we Christians can change the world, we can change ourselves, because God is love,” the Pope said in a video message to evangelical and Pentecostal pastors and Catholic Church leaders gathered at St Joseph’s Seminary and College in Yonkers, New York, and online for a retreat June 9-10.
The retreat, which included Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, and Auxiliary Bishop James Massa of Brooklyn, was sponsored by the John 17 Movement, an Arizona-based initiative founded by a Pentecostal pastor to promote Christian unity.
In his message, Pope Francis said, “The John 17 Movement is about those who, around the table…, discover they are brothers and sisters, not on account of their colour, nor their nationality, nor their place of origin, nor the different forms in which they live out their faith, but as children of the one same Father”.
Call for bishops to expand pastoral ministry to migrants
A Vatican official asked a group of bishops gathered at Mundelein Seminary June 2 to think of migrants, whether they arrive for the short or long term, as “parishioners” and organise pastoral plans to tend to them.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, undersecretary of the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, addressed via Zoom an emergency meeting of bishops from the US, Central America and Mexico, which included heads of major US Catholic organisations that help migrants.
“I hope that, after this meeting, you can call your priests together and consider the pastoral task incumbent on us all: to welcome, to protect, to promote and to integrate,” Cardinal Czerny said.
“And in each case, the migrants are ‘our’ parishioners, whether briefly or long-term, whether practicing Catholics or of other faiths or no religion at all.”
Cardinal Czerny, in particular, praised the “effective ministry” of women religious and spoke of “the recent deployment of religious sisters from all across the United States to care for unaccompanied youth and children arriving at the border”.