Pope Francis effectively put an end to this peculiarity of the Secretariat of State in 2020, when he decided to transfer responsibility for the administration of funds and investments from the Secretariat of State to APSA. “The norms originated from it therefore, it could not undergo the norms.” “The Secretariat of State was a dicastery, but a sui generis dicastery,” Cardinal Becciu explained. It sought to better separate supervisory and administrative functions within the Vatican, removing some of the Secretariat for the Economy’s responsibilities and returning them to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See ( APSA). Later in 2016, Pope Francis issued the motu proprio “ I beni temporali” (“The temporal goods”). Therefore, tensions were very high until the Holy See renegotiated the terms of the auditing contract. The Secretariat of State is a governing body that enjoyed special financial autonomy and, above all, confidentiality in its financial statements. A major flashpoint was the economy secretariat’s decision to enter into an auditing contract with PricewaterhouseCoopers, which allowed the company also to audit the Secretariat of State’s accounts. There were growing tensions between the Secretariat of State and the Secretariat for the Economy, then led by Cardinal George Pell. Indeed, in 2016, there was a rescript delivered to us by Cardinal Parolin which reaffirmed this autonomy.” “To violate its autonomy, a specific mandate from the pope was needed,” Becciu said, “but that never happened. Cardinal Becciu argued that the auditor could not have known the situation in detail because “the Secretariat of State was completely autonomous from a financial point of view.”
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