When he came to office in the late 1970s, one of the first things Pope John Paul II had to deal with was cleaning up the crooked Vatican Bank. Apparently it has once again become too dangerous to trust Vatican bankers with your money. From NPR:

The Vatican has launched a rare criminal investigation to uncover who is behind leaks of highly sensitive documents that allege corruption and financial mismanagement in Vatican City.

Interesting. The criminal investigation is over who leaked the documents indicating possible corruption, not over the possible corruption itself. More:

The documents also shed light on purported infighting over the Vatican Bank’s compliance with international money-laundering regulations.

… The U.S. State Department has put the Vatican on a list of countries of concern for money laundering or other financial crimes.

OK, so I’m naive about this, but … what?! The US State Department warns the public that it’s worried about the Pope’s bank laundering money? True, the list of countries of concern is pretty long, including the UK and even the US itself; all it reflects is a concern that these countries are places where money laundering is going on. But you don’t expect to see the Vatican on such a list, especially given that it is a tiny, centrally controlled state that has only one bank: it’s own. And, well, because it’s, um, THE CHURCH!

Of course, the Church’s top media guy blames the media for this scandal:

But Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi reacted angrily on Vatican Radio.

“The U.S. government had Wikileaks, the Vatican now has its leaks,” Lombardi said. “They create confusion and bewilderment, showing the Vatican and the Catholic Church in a bad light. Reporters should use reason — something not everyone in the media tends to do.”

OK, here’s the part of the NPR story that really interests me. Back in January, the respected journalist and Vatican analyst Sandro Magister got into the ecclesial politics involved here. It’s absorbing background information about how personalities within the Curia clash. Now, Magister’s colleague among the top Vaticanisti,  journalist Marco Politi, explains that the banking crisis and squabbling among top Curial cardinals is a sign of more significant trouble within this papacy:

Veteran Vatican analyst Marco Politi says, “These Vatileaks are the sign of a deep crisis within the government of the pope.”

He says the leaks do not reflect a dispute between liberals and conservatives within the Church, but rather a deep malaise over Benedict’s governance.

“He has not the sense of the government, of the leadership, he has no geopolitical vision, there have been so many crises in his papacy like it never happened in the last 100 years of other popes,” Politi says.

That’s quite a claim, that last one. Do you think it’s true? I haven’t followed this papacy much, but I know that so very many conservative Catholics had so much hope when Cardinal Ratzinger became pope, that many of the weaknesses in John Paul II’s approach to governing the church would be taken care of. Cardinal Ratzinger had been at the top of the Vatican’s governing structure for many years. Though he did not have the reputation of being an able politician like Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, there was at the time great confidence that the new pope had a much clearer sense of the Church’s problems, especially administratively, and would move to reform them. Now Politi indicates things have gotten worse.

Is this true? Again, I haven’t followed events in Benedict’s papacy regularly, or closely, so I’m not sure. If you have insight into what’s going on with all this, please weigh in.