ROME — Pope Leo XIV has taken his biggest step yet to correct one of Pope Francis' more problematic financial moves, canceling a special Holy See fundraising commission that was announced under questionable circumstances while Francis was hospitalized.
Leo on Thursday formally suppressed the fundraising commission, abrogated its statutes and fired its members. He decreed that its assets would go to the Holy See as a whole, and that the Vatican patrimony office would oversee the commission’s extinction.
A new working group would be formed, with papally approved members, to come up with fundraising proposals and an appropriate structure going forward, the decree said.
The decree was the latest sign that as 2025 comes to an end, history's first American pope is wrapping up the loose ends of Francis' pontificate. Leo is correcting problems as needed and fulfilling Francis' Holy Year obligations, as he looks ahead to the new year when he can focus more on his own agenda.
The Vatican had announced the creation of the commission, its statutes and members on Feb. 26, while Francis was in the hospital battling double pneumonia. At the time, he was being visited by the top officials of the Secretariat of State.
The commission included only Italians with no professional fundraising experience. Its president was the assessor of the Secretariat of State, the very same Vatican office that Francis had previously stripped of its ability to manage assets after it lost tens of millions of euros in a scandalous London property deal.
The concentration of power back in the Secretariat of State, the lack of qualified fundraisers and absence of any Americans on the board — the U.S. is the biggest donor to the Vatican — immediately raised questions about the commission’s credibility. To some, it smacked of the Italian-led Secretariat of State taking advantage of a sick pope to announce a new flow of unchecked donations into its coffers after Francis took its 600 million-euro ($684 million) sovereign wealth fund away and gave it to another office to manage as punishment for the London fiasco.
The decree by the American pope thus appears to be an effort to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. Donations are a crucial source of revenue to the Holy See, and wealthy American donors in particular had been looking to Leo, a math major, to impose greater financial transparency and accountability on the Vatican's books.
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