A senior Vatican cleric was arrested yesterday on suspicion of the attempted smuggling of 20 Million Euros into Vatican City from Switzerland on a private jet, seemingly continuing a long tradition of secrecy, intrigue and corruption within the Vatican bank. But the suspect, Monsignor Nunzio Scarana, 61, one of the Vatican's highest ranking financial administration accountants, claimed the charges were the result of a misunderstanding not only of the specific circumstances surrounding this event, but also of the Church's financial dealings in general, saying:
"Hey, I wasn't smuggling this money. This money came to the Church because it had been involved in a criminal enterprise, and it felt guilty about it, so it wanted to confess its sins. And because the sins in this case were purportedly so great, this money felt it must come to the Vatican itself for confession in order to find absolution. And I wasn't smuggling it, so much as I was respecting its privacy under the priest-penitent privilege, the confidentiality agreement required for the possessor of a guilty conscience to feel safe enough to partake of this sacrament and truly feel absolved. You see, we knew that this money would have become the focus of unwanted limelight and scandal rag sensationalism had we brought it in publicly, so I attempted to invite the money in incognito, to protect its reputation. Plus, this money is truly contrite as to the criminal manner in which it was made, despite the fact that it couldn't help how it was created, and so it was seeking redemption by investing itself in helping the poor. And I thought, hey: we help the poor right here in the Vatican, and so the money asked if it could live here as penance for its original sin, joining with lots of other penitent money from other corrupt practices, and helping in financing our efforts to save souls and feed the poor. And so as you can see, we were merely seeking to save this money. We keep hearing about how people aren't saving enough money, and here I was about to save some money, and I get arrested and accused of all this nefarious malefaction. Talk about mixed signals! What kind of message does this send when people like me get arrested for trying to save money? It's outrageous! Why, all I can say about these charges is: Jesus wept."
A Vatican spokesman repeated this assertion and said that it is not unusual for the moneys of various criminal enterprises to seek sanctuary within Vatican coffers not only for absolution, but also to escape the unwanted influence of criminal underworld types, preventing such monies from being subject to inclusion in further criminal activity, and that the entire issue of corrupt money within the Church and its related sources and purposes is completely misconstrued, resulting in nothing less than absolute unwarranted and discriminatory obloquy.
Here's the money-saving story:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/28/vatican-bank-arrests-idUSL5N0F40KQ20130628
