PwC has been appointed to conduct a wide-ranging external audit of the Vatican’s accounts in a bid to assist the Pope in his zeal to excommunicate corruption from the Church.
The Holy See said the Big Four firm would begin the audit immediately and would be working in close harmony with Cardinal George Pell, the Australian appointed to head up the recently formed secretariat for the economy to oversee papal finances following a series of damaging scandals.
Argentinian Pope Francis (pictured) has repeatedly vowed to clean up the Vatican’s opaque finances where a number of church departments failed to abide by international accounting standards, which, in 2013, ultimately ended its relationship with the international financial markets.
A recently published book by Gianluigi Nuzzi, Merchants in the Temple, charted the pope’s determination to tackle the murkier elements afflicting the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church.
In June, the Vatican installed a Deloitte man as its first auditor-general as part of reforming Pope Francis’ latest assault on cleaning up the tainted and scandal-riven reputation at the global HQ of the Roman Catholic empire.
Italian Libero Milone, an ex-chairman and CEO of Deloitte in Italy, was selected for the role, and is expected to play a key part in cleaning up its finances, a Vatican statement confirmed.
Two years ago, KPMG was brought in by the Vatican to advise it on its internal accounting procedures following a series of problems within the Holy See’s finances.