[T]he Pope made the request for the massive grant, which is 100 times larger than its normal grants, through Papal Foundation board chairman Cardinal Donald Wuerl in the summer of 2017.A visitor who is familiar with Italy and the Italian press, where the IDI hospital scandal has been covered for several years, has sent me several links. All of these are translated via Google translate, which my visitor points out is not as good in Spanish or Italian. (For some reason, I suppose in part because I am complacently German in build, people in Germany walk up to me on the street and ask me for directions. I can translate German pretty well, but little else authoritatively.)Despite opposition from the lay “stewards,” the bishops on the board voted in December to send an $8 million payment to the Holy See. In January, the documents reveal, lay members raised alarm about what they consider a gross misuse of their funds, but despite their protests another $5 million was sent with Cardinal Wuerl brooking no dissent.
Per Italian Wikipedia,
The Istituto Dermopatico dell'Immacolata , better known as IDI, is a hospital with headquarters in the Aurelio district (Rome) in the area of the "mountains of clay". It was founded in 1912 by the Congregation of the Sons of the Immaculate Conception as an institute for the treatment of dermatological diseases . In 1990, it became a scientific hospital . Since 2015 he belongs to the Luigi Maria Monti Foundation led by Antonio Maria Leozappa.This story from 2012, viewed somewhat murkily via Google translate, outlines some of the implications:. . . . In the '70s and' 80s, the institute became a reference structure in the Italian healthcare scene, also thanks to its scientific contribution in the dermatological field.
. . . In 2012, episodes of mismanagement led to the opening of judicial investigations for alleged wrongdoing with the indictment of some members of the Congregation. The institute plunged into a management crisis that forced the summits to request a prior agreement with the Court of Rome. On 29 March 2013, with the decree of the MISE, the institute entered an extraordinary administration that ended on 14 April 2015 with the acquisition of the institute by the Luigi Maria Monti Foundation.
In addition, the Vatican secretariat of state has unobtrusively sent an apostolic visitor in recent months to check the accounts of the IDI. And who has witnessed the attempt - then faded - promoted by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to take over the San Raffaele hospital with funds taken partly from the IOR (Institute for Religious Works), he hypothesized that the Holy See could help also with the Idi. Especially when thousands of jobs are at risk. Especially when the nine Roman religious hospitals of the Aris (religious association social-health institutions), from Gemelli to Fatebenefratelli on the Tiber Island, are on a war footing with the spending review of Commissioner Bondi. Especially after the Vicariate of Rome intervened to express its "apprehension" for the destinies of Catholic health in the city of the Pope. And even more so after the responsibilities of religious who have become more interested in their own affairs than in the care of the faithful have emerged. . A category of people who - from the pedophilia scandal to the intrigues of the IOR to the murky events linked to the properties of Propaganda fide - Pope Ratzinger has never tolerated.This excerpt from a 2013 story in Corriere della Sera gives more context:
Here in addition to dermatological services there was also surgery: "Up to twenty, thirty operations a day. There were also waiting lists," says the employee. Now it has become difficult, if not impossible, to guarantee even a minimum of ordinary assistance: doctors, nurses and all the staff continue to work for the few remaining patients, but even the simplest activities become an obstacle course when faced with more and more dull computers (with a ticket that refers to the "date of death") or instruments tampered with by hidden saboteurs who perhaps want to accelerate the decline of IDI. "The only ultrasound that works we take it in the morning from a locked room" says the anonymous employee. "The last one who uses it puts it back in the evening. If it breaks it's over". In all this, the deafening silence of the institutions: no one has moved a finger to stop the disaster of the hospital, owned by the Congregation of the Sons of the Immaculate. Only a few days ago the Vatican decided to commission the Congregation, appointing Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, president of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See, pontifical delegate, with the task of "guiding the religious Institute and directing the health structures it managed towards a possible economic rehabilitation, excluding however the participation of the Holy See in such works". The hope is that for IDI it is not too late.This story from March 2018 in Vatican Insider News summarizes the current situation:
There will not be, at least for the moment, the traditional audience of the Pope with the Papal Foundation, a charitable organization that for years has been supporting with some generous donations some activities of the Holy See. The appointment with the Pontiff was held every year during this period. The same association, one of the largest in the United States, which - explains the ANSA - still experiences internal tensions after the Vatican's request to support the three-year plan to relaunch the IDI, the dermatological Institute of Rome ended up bankrupt due to maladministration. According to the American media, the donation was expected to be around 25 million euros.The problem clearly goes beyond pedophile priests or gay-enabling bishops. The visitor who sent me these links assumes there must have been high-level influences at work to keep this story from being covered outside Italy, and the culpability of Wuerl and McCarrick seems to extend beyond what's normally reported..The "charity" that until now has operated with donations of smaller entities, especially in developing countries, has been divided. In the end, the board decided to donate. But, according to a letter signed by the archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, addressed to the same foundation, the amount of the "special" donation decided by the board was in any case halved; in addition, the hearing was postponed "until an agreement is reached - explains the cardinal - about the mission and structure of the foundation and its relations with the Holy See".
