Pope Francis makes a clean sweep of Vatican finances without looking at anyone's face. The resignation of Bostonian diplomat Mary Ann Glendon from the Council of the IOR are the latest signal in chronological order that we are at the showdown and that the turnaround is underway.
Already last November 27 thedeparture from the IOR of the assistant director Giulio Mattietti, that he had had to defend himself against the accusations of providing confidential information on the Vatican bank to prelates and cardinals at his discretion. But evidently the cleanup did not stop there and it is no coincidence that now throwing in the towel is a close collaborator of Mattietti as was Glendon, close to the old guard of the IOR and in particular to the American lobby headed by Cardinal Bertone and which was particularly influential at the time of the Ratzinger papacy.
After the scandals that have followed, the Pontiff intends to give a change to the IOR abandoning the call of external bankers, who in the past have been the cause of many economic and image problems for the Vatican, and trusting the new diarchy composed by the president Jean-Baptiste de Franssu and the director Gian Franco Mammì, who are an expression of the Curia.
