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By JOHN L. ALLEN
*Rome
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With the Dec. 2 death of retired Cardinal Michele Giordano of Naples, the Catholic world has lost not only a prince of the church, but perhaps its best example of the “cultural gap” between the Vatican and Main Street USA when it comes to the vexed matter of accountability for bishops.
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*Rome
*
With the Dec. 2 death of retired Cardinal Michele Giordano of Naples, the Catholic world has lost not only a prince of the church, but perhaps its best example of the “cultural gap” between the Vatican and Main Street USA when it comes to the vexed matter of accountability for bishops.
Code:
In thumbnail fashion, Giordano was the highest-ranking prelate ever to face criminal prosecution in Italy. In the late 1990s he was indicted for fraud and went through a full criminal trial (though he never set foot in court) in a case arising from a real estate scam orchestrated by his brother, causing massive embarrassment for the Italian church and the Vatican.
The case generated church-state tensions when police insisted on examining confidential documents of the Naples archdiocese, in addition to financial records that Giordano provided. The Vatican also protested that Italian investigators had not informed them that Giordano was a target of investigation, a notice they should have given under the terms of the concordat between the Holy See and Italy.More…