Vatican bank chairman says charges are part of campaign against Church
October 25, 2010
The chairman of the Vatican bank has charged that a money-laundering investigation is part of a “fierce attack on the Church’s credibility.”
Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the chairman of the Institute for Religious Works, said that he saw a pattern in recent news stories critical of the Catholic Church. Speaking at a conference in Fermo, Italy, the Vatican banker said: “First it was the attack on the pope, then the pedophilia-related facts, and now it carries on with the case that involves me.”
Tedeschi’s statement blurs the distinction between a gratituious and generally inaccurate media attack on the Pope, and the many documented stories that have appeared in the media in connection with the sex-abuse scandal. The observation that the media show an antipathy toward the teachings of the Church is warranted, but it does not address the question of whether or not the stories are accurate.
Moreover, Tedeschi’s charge goes beyond a complaint of media bias. The Institute for Religious Works is the subject of a legal investigation, which should eventually produce a result based on the facts of the case. Last week an Italian court rejected a Vatican argument to free the funds that were frozen by banking authorities at the commencement of the money-laundering investigation.
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