Vatican bank chief to step down amid restructure

The president and four non-executive members of the governing board of the Vatican bank are to step down.

French financier Jean-Baptiste de Franssu will take over as head of the bank from Ernst von Freyberg as part of a restructuring of the Catholic Church's central government.

Pope Francis has sought to stamp out corruption and other abuses at the bank, which handles the Church's funds.

The bank's profits fell last year to 2.9m euros from 86.6m euros in 2012.

Ernst von Freyberg was appointed by former Pope Benedict just before his retirement in February 2013 after allegations were made that the Vatican bank had been used by money launderers,

However, attempts to create a more transparent banking system for the Catholic Church will continue under new management.

"Our ambition is to become something of a model for financial management rather than cause for occasional scandal," the former head of the Catholic Church in Australia, Cardinal George Pell, told reporters.

He will head a new economic affairs department at the Vatican, with oversight of all the Vatican's financial dealings and will report directly to the Pope.

The cardinal was called to Rome as a result of a year-long attempt to clean up the Vatican's accounts.

Balance sheet woes

The Vatican's precarious financial situation was revealed by the simultaneous publication in Rome of balance sheets for 2013 of the Holy See, of the Vatican City state, a separate entity, and of the Vatican bank, known officially as the Institute for Religious Works (IOR).

The IOR moves money around the world to finance Catholic missions and provides banking services for the Pope, clergy and religious orders.

Alongside the bank's massive drop in profits, the Holy See, the administrative headquarters of the Church, ran up a deficit of 24.2m euros (£19.2m) last year.

However Vatican City state, the tiny sovereign enclave in the heart of Rome, which derives a large part of its income from tickets to the Vatican museums, reported a profit of 32.3m euros (£25.7m).

The bank's losses were attributed in part to writedowns of investments made before the bank's reform programme started and when less vigilance was exercised.

The cost of bringing in American anti-money laundering experts to comb through and vet some 18,000 individual accounts at the Vatican amounted to 7.3m euros.

In an interview with the BBC in his Vatican bank office overlooking St Peter's Square, I asked Mr von Freyberg if he had discovered many skeletons in the cupboards of the IOR during his term of office.

"Only small ones," he replied. "There is much less to the IOR than people think. We are smaller than most small town savings and loans [banks] in the world and the same is true of our skeletons."

"Whatever we found is much smaller than you might believe reading up about the Vatican bank in the media," he added.

According to the IOR website, the total assets of the Vatican bank amount to 5.9 billion euros.

Under Mr von Freyberg's management some 3,000 customer relationships have been terminated, leaving about 15,000 current accounts active.