Pope Leo trims powers of Vatican bank, rolling back a Francis reform

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By Joshua McElwee

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -Pope Leo cancelled the Vatican bank’s sole authority over investments held by the city-state on Monday, rolling back one of the financial reforms of his predecessor Francis.

In a short decree, Leo said the Vatican bank, known officially as Institute for the Works of Religion, would no longer control all investments made by Vatican departments, as Francis had mandated in 2022.

The decision gives Vatican departments freedom to use foreign banks.

Leo annulled Francis’ previous mandate but said the departments should continue to use the Vatican’s bank, “unless the competent bodies … deem it more efficient or convenient to resort to financial intermediaries established in other states”.

The Vatican’s financial reputation has been tarnished in past decades by its opaque finances and cases of corruption, embezzlement, and other crimes. Francis, who led the Church for 12 years, enacted a series of reforms to address the issues.

Leo’s decree only rolls back one of those reforms, which mandated that all investments be handled by the Vatican bank.

Some officials had complained since the 2022 reform that Francis’ move had given the bank too much power over other Vatican departments, which could not even have investments in banks in nearby Italy.

The new decree mandates that Vatican departments continue to follow the Vatican’s investment policies, which were written by an oversight committee Francis created in 2022.

(Reporting by Joshua McElwee, editing by Alvise Armellini and and Alex Richardson)