July 26, 2016
The Vatican and the Bank of Italy on Tuesday signed a key cooperation agreement aimed at regularizing their relations and ending years of Italian mistrust over Holy See finances.
The accord, signed by BOI Governor Ignacio Visco and the Vatican’s top financial regulator, Rene Bruelhart, comes after years of financial reforms, most of them under Pope Francis, to bring the Vatican and its troubled bank up to international standards to guarantee transparency and combat money laundering.
A joint statement said the agreement, which the Vatican had lobbied hard to win, “aimed at enhancing the exchange of information in the field of financial supervision, on the basis of reciprocity”.