00 23/09/2009 18:55



So, finally, the expected outcome of the IOR makeover. Here is how Vatican Radio reported it this morning:


Gotti Tedeschi is new IOR president
Translated from
the Italian service of



The cardinals oversight commission for the Istituto per le Opere Religiose (IOR) [better known as 'the Vatican bank'], presided by the Cardinal Secretary of Satte Tarcisio Bertone, at the recommendation of the IOR's new Supervisory Council, has named Prof. Ettore Gotte Tedeschi as the new president of the Council [and therefore of the bank] , with Ronaldo Hermann Schmitz as vice president.

Prof. Gotti Tedeschi succeeds Angelo Caloia.

Earlier, the cardinals' commission named the members of the Supervisory Council. Besides Gotti Tedeschi, who is president of the Italian branch of Santander Consumer Bank [a Spanish bank], and Schmitz, the other Council members are: Carl Anderson, Supreme Commander of teh Knights of Columbs; Giovanni De Censi, president of Credito Valtellinese; and Manuel Soto Serrano.

The cardinals thanked Prof. Caloia for his generous service to IOR and expressed their best wishes to the new Supervisory Council, as well as to the IOR prelate, Mons. Piero Pioppo; Paolo Cipriano, director-general, and Massimo tulli, vide director.



Vatican bank has new chairman



VATICAN CITY, Sept. 23 (AP) – The Vatican has named an Italian economist as the chairman of its bank.

The Vatican said Wednesday that Ettore Gotti Tedeschi replaces Angelo Caloia at the helm of the bank, formally known as the Institute for the Works of Religion.

The statement said Caloia and the bank's other board members had resigned. The Vatican did not give a reason.

Gotti Tedeschi served as the head of the Italian operations of Spain's Banco Santander. In the book "Money and Heaven", he explored capitalism and Catholic values.

The Vatican bank was famously implicated in a scandal over the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano in the 1980s. Roberto Calvi, the head of the Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982. The circumstances remain mysterious.


Vatican Bank names new president
By Lorenzo Totaro and Flavia Krause-Jackson



ROME, Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, chairman of the Italian unit of Banco Santander SA, has been appointed as the new head of the Vatican Bank.

Gotti replaces Angelo Caloia, according to a statement on the Vatican Web site. The Commission of Cardinals chose Gotti today to head the bank, which is known as the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR).

Set up in 1942 by Pius XII to manage the Vatican’s finances, the IOR reports directly to the Pope. Caloia, 70, has been IOR’s chairman for more than 20 years.

Candidates to succeed him included Hans Tietmeyer, a former head of Germany’s Bundesbank, Antonio Fazio, ex-governor of Italy’s central bank, and Roberto Mazzotta, former chairman of Banca Popolare di Milano Scarl, the Italian daily La Repubblica reported on Sept. 18.

The institute was at the center of a scandal in the 1980s that led to the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, which had close ties to the Vatican, amid debt of $1.3 billion. The Vatican paid $240 million to compensate Ambrosiano’s account holders without admitting any wrongdoing.

The IOR also used to own part of Societa Generale Immobiliare, developer of the Watergate complex in Washington, according to the Washington Business Journal.

Gotti, 64, is a professor of ethics and finance at Milan’s Catholic University. He’s the author of the book, Denaro e Paradiso (Money and Paradise).


In the past two years, Gotti Tedeschi has also been L'Osservatore Romano's editorial commentator on economic matters, and was one of the consultants for the Pope's encyclical, Caritas in veritate.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/09/2009 03:06]