Posted by Richard Rawlinson
It’s a financial institution that should symbolise business and social integrity: mutual co-operation for the benefit of customers, employees and just causes. Instead, it’s scarred by dodgy financial transactions, cronyism and scandal.
But despair not. There’s one man who may yet sort out the mess, a leader already showing remarkable ROI (return on investment) since taking charge of the wider organisation to which the bank belongs.
Not for him senior ranking officials lining the pockets of criminal drug barons and pimps. Neither hypocritical champagne socialist nor unbridled hedge fund capitalist, he’s bringing decency and common sense to the table. What’s more, he has plenty of experience of the funeral business and of distributing food to the needy.
I’m referring to Pope Francis, who has brought in outside experts to the Vatican Bank to raise standards of transparency and probity, and investigate rumours of links to Mafia money laundering.
The Pope’s empathy with the downtrodden is resulting in an increase in church attendance around the world. He’s even replacing Obama as the pin-up of the secular left [see here http://www.theguardian.com/
But he might not be so popular with everyone when he’s wearing his CEO hat to counter corruption and excessive bureaucracy within the Vatican itself. Some reports even claim the Mafia is already plotting to kill him.
I hope I’m right to be skeptical about such rumours. Italian mobsters are strangely pious: they do things like kiss their rosary before shooting an enemy’s brains out. They also rarely act before carrying out a cost-benefit analysis, and hitting the head of the Catholic Church would surely be a catastrophic own goal.
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It feels like the start of Obama’s presidency. We’re in the ‘hopey changey’ phase at the moment. The liberals are cheering and the powers, thrones etc. are lying doggo for the moment. He’s got his work cut out to make a lasting difference. Power to his elbow though – he’s made a promising start,
Modernising Conservative MP Nick Boles has recently said the Tory Party will only win the 2015 election if it sticks to Cameron’s ‘detoxification’ programme. There’s a strong case that the Tories should learn lessons from UKIP, not Blair, and conclude Coalition liberalism is what’s the toxic turn-off.
The Pope will continue revealing the Christ-like values that the Church has always stood for. But those liberals who are willfully bigoted against the Church anyway will, in time, realise that Francis’s idea of ‘reform’ opposes corruption, but does not seek to challenge Catholic doctrine.