A simple way to understand Vatican financial scandals

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Oct 17, 2025

If you’re not a financial whiz, it can be difficult to follow the details of the Vatican financial scandals. Let me try to make it simple (since I’m not a financial whiz either), and see if you notice the single thread that runs all through the complex history.

• First the Vatican bank, the IOR, came under fire, with European banking regulators charging that it was open to money-laundering. Vatican officials resisted, but when European banks began cutting off banking privileges, the IOR had no choice, and began a painful process of internal reforms. The IOR has now won a clean bill of health from the regulators.
• Meanwhile Libero Milone, the Vatican’s auditor general, sought information about questionable investments and financial transactions. Vatican officials resisted, and arranged to have Milone fired.
• Then APSA, the Vatican’s treasury and internal bank, was hit with scandals and calls for reform. Vatican officials resisted, but finally Pope Francis ruled that all investments should go through the now-reformed IOR.
• But Vatican officials resisted that papal ruling, and this month Pope Leo rescinded it. As a Pillar report observes:
  • “Pope Leo’s move to end the legal requirement for all curial assets to be managed via the IOR was notable, given APSA’s history of financial scandals, and because it is exempted from international regulation and from ordinary external oversight among the Vatican’s financial institutions.”
• Milone, the fired auditor, sued for wrongful termination. Although he signaled that he would accept a negotiated settlement, Vatican officials resisted, and Vatican tribunals refused to hear his case. Milone’s final appeal is now pending before the supreme court of Vatican City.

Thus effective financial reform has come to the one Vatican institution, the IOR, that was subject to outside scrutiny. In other Vatican offices the initiatives for reform have been stifled or even reversed, because—stop me if you’ve heard this one—Vatican officials resisted.