Institute for the Works of Religion

The Institute for the Works of Religion, known as the Vatican Bank, is the source of personal account records that the late Pope secretly obtained and kept among papers concealed in his bedroom. The records expose disparities in the wealth of senior Church figures and make the institution central to the novel’s conflict over financial transparency, privacy, and accountability within the Curia.

Records in the Hidden Archive

The late Pope’s financial papers are found in a small wooden case drawn from a concealed compartment in the bedpost of his apartment. Among columns of figures, bank statements, money transfers, and addresses, Jacopo Baldassare Lomeli finds a summary of his own personal account at the Institute for the Works of Religion. It lists monthly totals covering more than a decade; the most recent entry, dated September 30, gives a closing balance of €38,734.76, a figure Lomeli had not known himself.

The same papers list the account balances of other cardinals. Aldo Bellini has €42,112 on deposit, Joshua Adeyemi €121,865, and Joseph Tremblay €519,732. Goffredo Tedesco’s balance is €2,821, while Vincent Benítez appears to have no account. The list also includes a much larger sum for Calogero Scozzazi, Archbishop Emeritus of Palermo: €2,643,923. Lomeli notes that some cardinals from Africa and Asia had deposited large amounts during the previous year. The figures turn a diffuse suspicion of clerical wealth into a detailed, private accounting.

Institutional Scrutiny and Suspicion

The account summaries sit alongside papers concerning the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, or APSA, and the Church’s property holdings. An addendum to the late Pope reports that APSA’s properties total 347,532 square metres, with a potential value exceeding €2.7 billion but a stated book value of €389.6 million. It estimates a paid occupancy rate of only 56 percent and says that much of the income may not be properly declared. The juxtaposition of property data and bank records presents financial oversight as a problem extending beyond individual account holders.

The late Pope’s papers bear on a reform effort that Aldo Bellini describes as beginning with the new pontiff’s demand for full financial transparency. He required proper books, disclosed accounts, outside tenders for even small building projects, and receipts; he also brought in accountants and management consultants to examine files. Bellini says the scrutiny provoked resistance and leaks about funds intended for the poor being used to benefit the Pope’s associates. The hidden records therefore belong to a broader struggle over whether Church finances would be exposed to systematic examination.

Secrecy, Accountability, and the Church

Lomeli is unsettled not only by what the records allege but by how they were acquired. The late Pope had secretly used his authority to obtain colleagues’ private financial information from the Institute for the Works of Religion. Lomeli finds some of the disclosures unsurprising, including concerns about Curial apartments and the personal wealth of cardinals, but the archive most strongly reveals to him the late Pope’s state of mind. The records thus carry a double implication: they may support scrutiny of concealed wealth, while their secret collection raises questions about the means used to pursue reform.

A quotation from the Gospel of Mark, written in the late Pope’s hand beside the account listings, condemns the transformation of a house of prayer into a den of robbers. Against that moral charge, the detailed balances make financial accountability concrete, while the late Pope’s covert access to private records complicates any simple division between investigator and institution. The Institute’s role in the novel is therefore both practical and symbolic: its records become evidence in a struggle to make Church administration answerable to the principles it professes.