Among the many challenges confronting Pope Francis as he assumed the papacy was the issue of the Vatican Bank. Francis could have taken the decisive step of closing the Institutes for the Works of Religion, as the bank is officially known, but, instead, he mandated operational reforms. By replacing key administrators and insisting on implementation of policies and procedures required by the European Union in the post-9/11 world, Francis sought to shore up the bank.
Pope Francis' fix addressed how the bank will operate going forward. However, he left unaddressed some questions from the past which need to be answered: during and after World War II, was the Vatican bank a witting or unwitting accomplice of Nazi collaborators known as Ustashi who made their way from a seminary in Rome to safe havens in South America? Did the Vatican bank profit as a result of payments received from these Nazi collaborators who were known as the Ustashi? If we were to follow the Ustashi money, where would the trail lead?
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