Opus Dei To Hunt Down Vatican Whistle-Blowers

First time accepted submitter Aguazul2 writes "In a familiar story relocated into the bizarre world of the Vatican, a whistle-blower who brought to light excessive overpayments on contracts to friendly suppliers was sent to the USA as punishment, and further sources of leaks are now being hunted down by a crack team headed by an 82-year old Opus Dei cardinal. It's just like Wikileaks, only with parchment and quills — probably."

my MIT classmate works at Vatican

[peter303]

I assure you its more up to date than pens-and-quills. He is one of their dozen astronomers and they have state-of-art observatories around the world [wikipedia.org].

Re:Hope they make an Anime of it

[sandytaru]

Any time Japan tackles anything related to Christianity in an anime the results tend to be quite awesome. Wolfwood from Trigun is probably still my favorite. (Not Catholic, but still awesome-funny.)

Re:Hope they make an Anime of it

[Ihmhi]

Don't forget Alexander Maxwell from Hellsing and Rosette Christopher from Chrno Crusade!

Re:Which is why...

[Attila Dimedici]

You do realize that the Vatican is a sovereign state, right? The Vatican has the right to structure their reporting structure any way they want. It is not a democracy. In a democracy, the government is theoretically answerable to the people and therefore the people have a claim to being informed by whistleblowers as to inappropriate behavior on the part of government officials (and therefore whistleblower protections should exist to some degree in a democracy). The Vatican on the other hand is not in anyway a democracy. The various officials of the Vatican government are only theoretically answerable up the chain of command to the Pope, who is, theoretically, answerable to no power on earth. Someone in the Vatican government who reports inappropriate behavior to someone outside of the Vatican government hierarchy is not a "whistleblower", as, theoretically, there is no one outside of the Vatican government to blow the whistle to, they are, instead, a traitor (I am not sure if that is the correct word from the perspective of Vatican governance, but if it isn't, I am not sure what is). They have betrayed their commitments as a member of that organization (similar to someone who had reported such actions by a government official of the USSR to a western government).

Re:No one expects the Spanish Inquistion!

[Penguinisto]

Unfortunately, you got bad information. Let's get you started on the basics first: Start here [wikipedia.org].

It ain't the "Spanish Inquisition" as you and GP were talking about. That particular group is detailed here [wikipedia.org], and ran independently of the Vatican (it was a pet project of the Spanish crown). Surprisingly, as an institution the Spanish Inquisition lasted into the 19th Century.

Re:Which is why...

[hey!]

First point: the Vatican has its own law (canon law) which everyone is supposed to follow, despite the monarchical form of government everyone is supposed to follow. So it is possible for somebody to be a whistlblower, although that itself is a crime under canon law. That's why the clergy sex abuse scandal went on so long. Canon law precludes doing anything that would bring disrepute upon the church, which is why pedophiles weren't turned over to the police.

Second point: one of the people they are looking for is a person who suggested that the Vatican has more information about the 1983 disappearance of two fifteen year-old girls who held dual Italian-Vatican citizenship. That makes this an international incident. Their disappearance happened during a dispute between Italian organized crime and the Vatican bank. The mob had been laundering money through Banco Ambrosiano, an Italian bank in which the Vatican bank had controlling interest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Calvi#The_Banco_Ambrosiano_scandal). The implication is that the girls were kidnapped to put pressure on the Vatican to make good the Mafia's losses.

That sounds a bit Dan Browne, but after he was killed in a mob hit, an Italian gangster named Enrico de Pedis was granted burial in a Vatican basilica, an honor normally reserved for cardinals. The speculation is that this was a pay off for brokering a settlement between the Vatican bank and the mob.

The point is that it's not like the Vatican can operate in a vacuum. There are Italian interests involved here: Italian citizens, companies, and mobsters. The Banco Ambrosiano affair also involves the forgery of US securities.

Re:Which is why...

[Opportunist]

The "legality" of a government is usually tied to some kind of justification as to how it is entitled to act as a government. There are various forms of justifications. Some a bit more outdated than the others, but none are less or more valid from a purely objective point of view. If you do not accept a non-democratic government, that's your prerogative, but it's not yours to tell anyone whether he should or should not respect the rule of someone.

The Vatican chose to be an elective monarchy (the only one left, btw). And as long as the marjority of those concerned (read: the majority of roman catholics) accepts this legitimation, it's valid.

It's a bit like money. It only has some value as long as people believe in its value.

Personally, I would not accept that kind of government as mine either. But it's not on me to tell the Vatican that it cannot be an elective monarchy.