Bishops want probe of missing billions mystery

Catholic bishops are preparing formally to ask Pope Francis to order an investigation into how A$2.3 billion was transferred from the Vatican to Australia over six years without their knowledge.

The Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference said it was astonished at the scale of the transfers from the Holy See’s secretariat of state since 2014.

Mark Coleridge, the Archbishop of Brisbane and president of the conference, said no Catholic worshipper, diocese, charity, religious order or church entity had received any of the billions of dollars.

The bishops’ action comes after a report from the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (Austrac), the government agency responsible for detecting criminal abuse of the financial system, found that more than 400,000 transactions had been made since 2014.

Transfers from the Vatican to Australia rose from A$71.6 million in 2014 to A$137.1m in 2015, before doubling again to A$295m in 2016 and peaking at A$581.3m in 2017.

The Australian Federal Police are investigating some of the transactions. The people who received the money have not been disclosed.

‘‘Australian bishops did not know about these transfers until the Austrac disclosure . . . and we were astonished,’’ Coleridge said.

Cardinal George Pell, an Australian who was formerly head of the Vatican’s finances, raised the possibility on Italian TV two weeks ago that his enemies in the church might have conspired to frame him on sexual assault charges because of his efforts to clean up church finances. He alluded to the possible secret use of Vatican funds.

The pope called Pell to the Vatican in 2014 to take charge of its finances because he had concerns about their administration. The cardinal was reported to have clashed with the secretariat of state, especially Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, its former deputy.

Pell returned home to Melbourne in 2017 after police in Victoria announced that they were charging him with historical sexual assault offences. In December 2018, a Melbourne jury convicted him on five charges and he was jailed. Last April, however, Australia’s highest court quashed the convictions.

Francis signed a new law last week that stripped the secretariat of state of all its financial and property assets, amid a growing scandal involving investments.