(May 25, 2012) The president of the Vatican bank was fired on Thursday by the bank's
board of directors, who censured him for neglecting his duties amid worsening management
problems. The board of the bank, formally known as the Institute for the Works of
Religion, issued an unusually blunt statement through the Vatican Press Office, noting
that members had repeatedly expressed concern over Ettore Gotti Tedeschi’s “governance”
of the bank but that the "situation has deteriorated further." The statement said
that the board voted to censure Gotti Tedeschi "for not having carried out various
functions of primary importance to his office," but did not specify the functions
in question. The Vatican said “the action is important to maintain the vitality" of
the bank. Pope Benedict XVI had appointed Gotti Tedeschi, an Italian banker and
professor of financial ethics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan,
as president of the bank in 2009. The appointment was seen at the time as a move toward
greater transparency in the bank's operations. The following September, Italian magistrates
placed Gotti Tedeschi under investigation in a money-laundering probe, saying that
the bank had failed to disclose information about banking operations as mandated by
Italy's 2007 law against money-laundering. In a move to bring its banking laws in
line with international norms intended to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing,
the Vatican last year set up an oversight body called the Financial Information Authority.