The new leader of the Catholic Church inherits the financial turmoil that Pope Francis spent much of his reign trying to correct

Even on his deathbed, Pope Francis did not suspend pursuing a dog campaign that reformed the Vatican’s infamous, troublesome finances that distinguished his rule. On February 27th, day 13 at Gemeri Hospital in Rome revealed the formation of a high-level committee allocated to raise donations to support chronic budgetary disorders at Gemeri Hospital in Rome, who is suffering from fatigue and bronchitis. Francis has launched a fundraising company as a gambit aimed at a sluggish demand by the top staff of Curia, his vast administrative division, that the world’s 1.3 billion Catholic leaders will halt his drive for deep spending cuts. Officials hit the Pope’s recent Draconian move: since 2021 he has cut the salaries of the church’s 250 cardinals three times. In 2023, he called for a tough timeline to achieve a “zero deficit” regime in September last year, with the exception of rich housing subsidies from elite staff.

His brave campaign made great strides when Pope Francis passed away on Easter Monday at the age of 88 in his modest Vatican apartment, but stopped just before the promised land.

The writer began to overturn the Pope’s correct accusations at the time of creation. In early 2014, I traveled to Rome and saw firsthand the influx of business experts that Francis had set up and the new financial guardrails and fields he had summoned to support him. When Francis took office last year, almost everything that involved how the Vatican dealt with money needed to be fixed. Leadership dominated by clergy who lack accounting and investment expertise. and a reputation based on scandals. The stain of corruption, or at least incompetent, remained from the Banco Ambrosiano incident in the early 1980s. Financial proprietor Roberto Calvi has scam the Institute for Religious Works, aka Vatican Bank, with a $250 million dollars, and has largely empty it.

A few days after his facility collapsed, Calvi’s body was found hanging under the Blackfriars Bridge in London. British courts were unable to determine whether the cause of death was suicide or murder. Calvi’s plan duplied the “buddy” of the Archbishop of Paul Martinkin in the mid-1980s, whom I interviewed at a 9th century Gothic prison built by Pope Nicholas VI in the mid-1980s. The 6-foot-8-foot Martinkinchus, known as the Gorilla, rose from the power base in the Vatican as the bodyguard of Pope John Paul II. During our meetings he had hours of respect for how IOR was the Vatican’s biggest moneymaker, courtesy of pocketing the “spread” between the small interest Iol paid for in Jesuits and other religious orders for deposits and the much higher fees that rechanneled funds to European banks.

In Ambrosiano, Marcinkos accused the bank of “guaranteed” the bank’s debt on behalf of the IOR, claiming that the Vatican would only pay $250 million to protect its image. Not long ago, the Italian government dropped an arrest warrant for the Martin Kinks, who had been exiled for a year to the ground of the Vatican, a liberation that described his eerie mood. “I might be a poor banker,” he told me without a quote. “But at least I’m not in prison.”

Francis quickly showed that he is a new kind of leader in money matters

All my sources were newly appointed business leaders to support the Pope’s attacks. In the background, they were associated with a dramatic meeting in the summer of 2013, playing the dimension of his territory that Francis initially deemed important: the chronically stumbling role as a commercial enterprise. The Pope has appointed a team of seven business leaders from around the world as a committee to identify the issue and recommend the details of the extensive overhaul. They included French executive header asset management for the CEO of German insurance company Ergo, chief of Malta’s largest bank and former Prime Minister of Singapore.

Instead of holding confab at the Apostles Palace, a Renaissance show place that traditionally welcomed visitors, Francis took prominent guests to the non-explanatory meeting room at Casa Santa Marta, a four-star hotel Sablacusi-scale five-storey limestone guesthouse. There was no religious art or objects on the wall. Dressed in a simple white Cossack and metal cloth, the Pope took a very managerial “I am boss” approach, which the invitee may have recognized from addressing the EU inside him.

Frequently paused so that translators can repeat the words in English, the former cardinal of Buenos Aires said that in order for his spiritual message to be reliable, the Vatican finances must also be reliable. The Vatican had not overcome the practices formed by centuries of secrets and intrigue. His main mission, the new Pope, helped the poor and the less fortunate. The Vatican budget undermined its goals by hampering charity, from a small surplus to a yawning deficit. “When the administration is fat, it’s unhealthy,” he declared, adding that he wanted a much more lean and efficient organization to prove he was “independent.” To get there, strict rules and protocols are required.

It infuriated the Pope, who had kept paying overruns on fixed price contracts, especially when companies should have eaten overcharged. From now on, when the Vatican acquired the bill for the project, a contractor legally responsible for additional costs, he warned: “We won’t pay!” Like a good CEO, the Pope had a clear strategy. As one participant characterized the command, “Make money for the poor.” Francis said, “I trust you. You are an expert. I want a solution to these problems.” Pope Francis was not a micromanager studying the balance sheet, but he was a born leader expert in establishing clear goals and choosing the experts needed to meet them. Then, without asking questions or extending comfortably, he left the room.

In terms of finances, Pope Francis has proven himself the greatest of all the holy reformers. However, the issue of the Vatican budget continues to this day.

Following the meeting, its well-known board helped design fundamentally new architectures directed by veteran managers and consultants around the world, rather than religious leaders who run machines for centuries. The new administration hired KMPG to establish internationally accepted accounting principles to replace the standard old crazy quilt. ey To scrutinize books from shops and utilities in small countries, and Deloitte & Touche and Spencer Stuart audit P&L respectively and employ fresh talent at Vatican Bank. Pope Francis also established a new institution called the Secretariat of the Economics. Today, the best officials are MIT alumni who have spent a long career in management positions at Catholic universities and prominent institutions at the Church.

Though tighter surveillance has brought new discipline to runaway spending and boosted investment returns, it has not ended its long history of bad deeds that grabbed the Vatican headlines. In 2014, Cardinal, who served as the second-ranked official in the provincial office, was planned to be yet another shady Italian bigwig to buy stocks in the London building. The Secretariat then took full control of the property at a highly inflated price of around $400 million, and sold it a few years later at a loss of $150 million. A survey launched in 2019 found millions of euros disappeared due to kickbacks and self-dealing. However, this time the authorities have imposed severe justice. Vatican courts sent eight people, including Cardinal, to prison and fined two others.

Shortly after he came to power, Pope Francis ordered a job freeze. Certainly, his strategy of reducing the workforce through attrition was successful. However, the Vatican is still plagued by the burden of pension schemes, which were made fortune in the way he inherited. The Vatican financial world is divided into two parts. The first is a city-state, 110 acres of sovereign nation, which generally publishes budgets on the scale of medium-sized municipalities, employs ritual Swiss security guards and “genderm” police, and generally generates surplus running for large revenues from museums that were second visited in the world behind the second-most visited museums in the world and sale of louver sales.

The second is the vast bureaucracy of the Holy Sea or Curia, the Pope, doing everything from detective work to naming new saints’ names to running “congregations” like nine cabinets, from the equivalent of three dozen nations. It is constantly in the deficit – again, mainly through what it owes a large number of retirees. In recent years, Curia has spent around $800 million to $900 million a year, running a structural deficit that is well over $50 million. And that’s after being allocated to tens of millions of dollars of operating expenses in “Peters Pence.” It’s money collected in a collection that passes through the church aisles from Sydney to Warsaw on Sunday marking the East Feast of Saints Peter and Paul in late June. Once upon a time, the loyal, rich and poor people of the world send their funds to most of the Vatican.

The late Pope always wanted to pilot Peter’s Pence solely for his original purpose: to support the poor. It was a goal he cherished but had not lived to achieve. Still, Pope Francis has done an almost miracle that brings transparency, capabilities and integrity to the corner of perhaps the most infamous Byzantine corner of the financial world. From his hospital bed for his last few days, the Pope continued to fight against the Vatican facility to fill St. Francis of Sound Money Manage, a 13th century Italian monk dedicated to being oppressed by the oppressed sound money management as a tool to satisfy the role of the same name. The work is only finished if his successor shares Francis’ unusual tips for his unusual business strategy.

This story was originally introduced Fortune.com