Pope Francis Appoints 4 New Cardinals To Oversee Troubled Vatican Bank

Pope Francis has named 4 new Cardinals to oversee the Vatican Bank in his continuing effort to improve the state of the Church. Officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion, the Vatican Bank has come under serious scruitiny in recent years for harboring accounts that may be fronts for illegal activities. Pope Francis' new appointments replace all but one of the Cardinals named by his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, in a new example of the Argentine Pope's consolication of power.

Pope Francis has emerged as a stalwart for significant Vatican reform. On Sunday, the Argentine Pope named 19 new Cardinals from nations as diverse as Haiti and Burkina Faso, many of whom were uner 80 and thus eligible to elect Pope Francis' successor. Of the five Cardinals named by Pope Benedict less than a year ago, only Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran will remain to oversee the Vatican Bank. European regualtors have been pushing for the secretive bank to become more transparent for years.

“It is not surprising,” said one Vatican official familiar with the bank, who spoke on condition of anonymity to the New York Times. “It has been in the works. It is a normal turnover. It is good for the working of the institution.” The reform of the Vatican Bank was begun in the last year of Pope Bendedict XVI's papacy when Ernst von Freyberg, a German industrialist, was appointed as the bank’s first non-Italian president. Mr. Von Freyberg has been working to bring the Vatican Bank into compliance with international regulations.

Indeed, in December, Moneyval, a European monitoring agency, praised the Vatican for making significant efforts to improve the current state of its banking, however, it added that greater improvements were necessary. The new supervisory committee consists of five men: Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin; Cardinal Tauran; Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna; Cardinal Thomas Christopher Collins, archbishop of Toronto; Cardinal Santos Abril y Castilló, archpriest of the Papal Basilica of St. Mary Major.