Hemeroteca Read all the interviews on the back cover
Juan Vicente Boo (1954, A Pobra do Caramiñal, A Coruña) He has been a correspondent in
Brussels
,
New York
and
Hong Kong
.
And for 22 years it has been in
Rome
.
In
Deciphering the Vatican
(Espasa) he gives the keys to understanding the oldest and most convoluted institution in the world.
Is the Vatican really such a complicated place that you need a guide like the one you have written to decipher it?
Well yes, the Vatican is very complicated.
To begin with, what we call "the Vatican" are two completely different entities.
On the one hand, there is the Holy See, a group of organizations that help the Pope in his main task, which is spiritual and that of directing the Catholic Church.
And on the other hand, there is the Vatican State, which is very small, it is less than half a square kilometer, but it has some museums that are the oldest and richest in the world, a Vatican Library that has the oldest manuscripts and texts of the world culture, etc.
And then, to complicate matters further, both the Holy See and the Vatican State are made up of numerous departments ... Yes. The Holy See has sixty-odd departments, and on the Vatican State side there are twenty-somethings.
In total we are talking about 90 ... It must be crazy to get to master that convoluted organization chart, right?
Yes. Those 90 apartments are like 90 trees that prevent you from seeing the forest.
The first thing I did was a heavy logging to concentrate only on the departments fundamental to the Pope's work.
You say in your book that much of the complexity and confusion surrounding the Vatican are caused.
Can you explain it to me?
A number of sources of confusion coincide.
On the one hand there are the standards of the Italian press.
I am not saying this for the people who usually deal with the Vatican and who are called 'Vaticanists', but sometimes very distorted stories appear in the events or general information pages of Italian newspapers and that creates confusion around the Vatican.
On the other hand, the Vatican continues to use language a bit backward and often has slow reactions in communication.
And to that is added the complexity of the issues it deals with and the bad intention of some people, especially in the first part of Pope Francis' pontificate, who deliberately created confusion, with continuous indirect attacks on the Pope through foundations and the media. related to economic interests, especially the United States.
And who is behind these attacks on the Pope?
When Francis began to prepare his encyclical
Laudato Si
, the big coal industries of the United States and some of the oil companies unleashed a furious attack against him.
And there are also indirect attacks on the Pope by some arms industries and some investment funds.
Never throwing the stone directly, but financing media hostile to Pope Francis.
All of this has created a lot of confusion, but fortunately it is subsiding.
Among other things because the big North American oil companies are realizing that Francisco is right: the CEOs of the world's largest oil companies have already come twice to meet with Francisco to discuss energy transition, and in the last six months They have begun to echo Francis's proposals that the economy has to be more humane.
A group called Inclusive Capitalism has been created in New York, made up of big businessmen and CEOs of gigantic global companies who do not want economic inequality to continue growing or the disappearance of the middle class to continue.
They have already come to see the Pope and are dedicated to changing the orientation of capitalism, because in reality Francis has never attacked commercial capitalism, industrial capitalism, financial capitalism, a beneficial system to finance companies that produce cars, shoes. , services ... What is disastrous is speculative capitalism, which speculates in the markets and what it does is subtract the savings of companies or individuals.
Are some of those big companies with huge economic interests that launched that Pope Francis is a communist?
Maybe yes, because they launched all kinds of hoaxes.
The most brazen were those of the coal companies, they have been
lobbying
in different countries for
many years
.
There are coal subsidies in many countries and companies in the United States spend much of their budget
lobbying
and to create confusion, denying for example climate change when they are the main causes of climate change in developed countries.
You have covered NATO, you have dealt with the European Commission, the United Nations, you are used to reporting on large international organizations.
But you say that the opacity of the Vatican is so enormous that an expert Vaticanist like you, who has been covering the Vatican for 22 years, does not get to know more than 20% of what is cooked there ... That's right, the Vatican is excessively opaque , and that is one of the main causes of your problems.
The Vatican State is the most opaque in all of Europe.
And there is no reason for it to be this opaque in its financial accounts.
And the Holy See is also tremendously opaque, compared to dioceses such as Vienna, Boston or Los Angeles, which have budgets four or five times higher, or even compared to the Spanish Episcopal Conference, which draws up a very large balance of about 80 pages each year. , with many details about its economic activity.
This burden of opacity is something that the Vatican has dragged along from 1,100 years of Papal States, from the fight against the Kingdom of Italy when, since 1870, the Vatican felt threatened and had a feeling of secrecy.
That still holds and is bad.
Little by little it gets better.
He improved with John Paul II, with Benedict XVI and now with Francisco, but he is still very late.
If I'm not mistaken, the Holy See stopped publishing its financial statements in 2015 ... They stopped publishing them for about three or four years when the economic departments were being readjusted.
In those three or four years absolutely nothing was published.
It is true that in readjustment phases it costs more to take stock, but it can be done and it can be published.
Today the balance sheet of the Holy See is a sheet with very little data, and the balance sheet of the Vatican State is half a sheet with even less data, also written in confusing language and with disconnected data that do not allow you to analyze what is happening.
And all that ends as it has ended: with the embezzlement of funds in the Secretary of State itself.
Are things really changing with Francisco?
He says in his book: "The opacity in terms of balances and assets, already very high in the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, increased in that of Francis." It is that in the pontificate of Francis we have experienced the total absence of data inexpensive for about four years.
I am sure of Francisco's intention to make everything more transparent, but in fact it has not happened.
Perhaps despite himself, perhaps due to the absence of the Secretary of the Economy for several years ... There have been a series of anomalies and the result is that there has been less transparency.
One of the great and historic problems of the Vatican is the Vatican Bank, the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), which you claim is infiltrated by numerous criminals.
Terrible, right?
Yes. It is a shame, especially since the IOR is more than a bank is a toy bank: it is very small with a single branch in an old reconditioned tower, with a very small equity and very small deposits, less than any small savings bank of those that were in Spain.
But it has a gigantic potential to produce scandals, as in the time in which Marcinkus was its president during the pontificate of John Paul II and in later stages.
About three weeks ago, the Vatican Court ruled against two of three senior officials (one has died) of the Vatican Bank who together committed a gigantic fraud.
The three would be responsible for the theft of about 55 million euros about 15 years ago.
They were the president of the IOR, the director general of the IOR and the legal counsel of the IOR.
Fortunately, the two who live have been sentenced to eight years in prison but they have appealed, therefore they are not behind bars.
When will the Vatican bank be cleaned all at once?
The cleaning of the Vatican bank was started by Benedict XVI, but made little progress.
Instead, Francisco has achieved a radical change incorporating one of the best companies in the world in detecting illegal operations and money laundering, Promontory International.
It was they who identified thousands of accounts in the IOR of people who should not have accounts there.
And there began the cleaning of criminals.
But the definitive solution came when the Vatican bank began to send the Italian State notifications of the interests of Italians who had an account there for tax evasion.
From that moment they all left and in fact now the directors of the Vatican Bank have denounced the criminal acts they have detected to the Vatican Gendarmerie and the Vatican Prosecutor's Office.
Now they are part of the solution.
I have read in your book that one of the problems when it comes to reporting on the Vatican is that kind of sewer under its foundations, with people who are dedicated to circulating biased or directly false news ... Yes. This is a more visible mechanism in the Vatican than in other capitals in which I have worked as a correspondent: intoxicating underground through third parties, through fellow journalists who have blogs where they pour out the discomfort of people resentful with a boss or because they have not had a promotion, etcetera.
This phenomenon was very noticeable in the first four or five years of Pope Francis' pontificate, where there was continuous anonymous smelly poisoning through other people.
On two or three occasions they have tried to overthrow the pontificate of Francis, the most visible being the launch with the manifesto of the former nuncio Viganò in the summer of 2018, when the Pope was precisely in Dublin, Ireland, at the World Meeting of the families.
And there have been others.
But lately there is less poisoning of that kind, the people in the sewers are less active.
And because?
I think that because time has passed and they have realized that they could not beat Francisco.
The Vatican is a two-thousand-year-old institution that for the last two centuries has been governed in its social acts by the pompous and very worldly protocol of Versailles.
All that changed radically with the arrival of Francisco.
I suppose there will be members in the curia who do not like these transformations ... Some have really disliked them.
Since my arrival in Rome in 1998 I have seen many cardinals who walk and wait for the bus at the bus stop with the greatest normality.
And I have seen others who were unable to get around Rome without their official chauffeur.
These people obviously do not like that Francis goes with the commander of the Gendarmerie to the Vatican garage to choose a car, that he chooses a small utility vehicle and that he rejects the indication of the commander of the Gendarmerie that it was better to choose a vehicle that could shield.
The Pope wanted a middle-class vehicle, like any family and like any professional.
And that decision made it clear to everyone that a cardinal does not need a giant car, even a gift, because many large Vatican cars are gifts from companies.
Is there a reversal on the austerity that Francis has brought to the Vatican?
Are your changes called to remain or can they vary with the arrival of another Pope?
I am convinced that not only will they continue, but that the process will intensify.
A going back would be ridiculous.
From now on there could be more "conservative" or more "liberal" Popes.
But in terms of lifestyle, you cannot go back to a style that for a long time imitated the style of kings or millionaires.
What is the worst understanding of Francisco?
There is a Chinese saying that I learned in my time in Hong Kong: "When the wise man points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger."
And many people who appreciate Francisco and who love him have not yet realized where Francisco is pointing.
Francis is pointing again and again to the initial moment of Christianity, to that time when Jesus was walking through Galilee with his disciples, to that time when there were no structures, there were no buildings.
In a way, the first Vatican was Peter's house in Capernaum.
Francisco always guides us towards the initial moment, towards the original formula.
There are people who appreciate Francis who have not read in depth his programmatic text, which is the joy of the Gospel.
Reading that allows you to understand him one hundred percent. The Vatican has an overwhelming bureaucracy, probably the most convoluted in the world.
Why?
They are inheritances, burdens, of ancient European states, in some aspects that bureaucracy has a Napoleonic style, in other aspects it has a style of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
And also in the Catholic Church tradition is highly valued, continuity with the past.
And sometimes, unfortunately, it is very difficult for him to part with "relics" of the past that have become burdens.
John XXIII, for example, got rid of the gestatory chair, an Egyptian throne carried on the shoulders of twelve people, or sometimes more.
Paul VI got rid of the triple crown, which looked like a heavy-caliber artillery warhead, and also eliminated the cardinals' capa magna, which was six or seven meters long and which he was dragging, an inheritance from when the kings and the Nobles wore capes that also covered the back of the horse.
And Benedict XVI ditched the crown on his papal shield.
They were all elements that had become ridiculous and that survived longer than necessary because of that fear of getting rid of things from the past.
The secret is to distinguish the essential from the superfluous, because there has long been an accumulation of superfluous external elements, both in the ceremonial aspect and in the internal organizational aspect.
Francisco has eliminated many departments and is concentrating them.
With many complaints from those who disappear.
Does the Holy See press office continue to close at 3:00 p.m.?
Most of the days yes, sometimes at 4:00 p.m.
Although now the schedule is not so serious.
The director of the press office answers the media on WhatsApp, returns calls if he can, because when there is news, there is an avalanche of questions.
But at the beginning that schedule, which I have seen for more than 20 years and which was also strictly followed, was totally destructive, because 3:00 p.m. in Rome is 9:00 a.m. in New York and there was no one to talk to.
One of the advice they gave me shortly after arriving in Rome was that it never occurred to me to call a bishop or a cardinal at siesta time.
Still good advice?
It is no longer universal, but it is better to call them at other times.
Fortunately, the holidays are now much shorter.
Francis's nap lasts 20 minutes and the Pope wakes up without an alarm clock, he has told us several times.
Is the Vatican the way it is because they are in Italy or is Italy the way it is because it has the Vatican inside?
The two things are trues.
For a thousand years the central part of Italy was the Papal States, ruled by the Pope.
Many of the blackest, saddest, most scandalous and most shameful episodes in the history of the Popes are from those years, in which a series of noble families from Rome or the surrounding area fought for power and sometimes conspired to assassinate the reigning Pope and put another one.
They were political struggles between which, miraculously, the spiritual task of the Popes survived.
This has left a still visible drag on Italian culture.
But after 1870, when the Italian patriots did the Catholic Church the great favor of taking away the Papal States, quite the opposite happened.
The Vatican is in the heart of Italy and has many of the virtues of the Italians, which are extraordinary, but also many of their defects.
If the Vatican were in France, as it was in Avignon for a season, it would probably have the strengths and weaknesses of the French, and if it were in Spain, that of the Spanish.
But the problem is not the location, the problem is the lack of internationalization.
What do you mean?
In my years in Brussels, I saw that there were Belgian officials in NATO, but they were a minority.
In my New York years, I saw that there were American officials at the United Nations, of course, but they were a minority.
But in the Vatican there is a massive presence of Italians, they are practically everywhere, at all levels.
The change towards the internationalization of the Vatican curia is taking place, but there is still a long way to go.
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