VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Libero Milone, the Vatican’s former auditor general who claims he was forced to resign because he had turned up financial irregularities, said Wednesday (July 30) that corruption continues at the highest levels of the Catholic Church and that he plans to bring his wrongful termination lawsuit directly to Pope Leo XIV after it was dismissed by the Vatican Court of Appeals.
“I want to speak to the pope,” Milone told a handful of reporters in his lawyer’s office in Rome on Wednesday. “There are 1.4 billion faithful in the world who donate money to the church thinking they’re doing good — and I’m here to say that they’re not doing good. That money is being put in people’s pockets.”
He claimed to have proof of continued financial mismanagement at the Vatican, including irregularities in its accounting of its gold inventory and suspicious transactions regarding Vatican-owned hospitals.
Milone was hired by Pope Francis in 2015 as the Vatican’s first auditor, a position Francis created as part of an effort to inject transparency and accountability into church finances. In June 2017, the Vatican police raided Milone’s office, and Cardinal Angelo Becciu, then the third-highest-ranking official at the Vatican, accused him of espionage. Milone and hi …