‘Promoveatur ut amoveatur’ (promote him to get rid of him), a time-honoured tradition in the Vatican, seems to have been behind the promotion of Mgr Ettore Balestrero from Under-Secretary for Relations with States (deputy foreign minister) to the Pope’s Nuncio in Colombia.

This ‘promotion’, coming as it does just days before the present Pope stands down, has been read by Vatican observers as a very significant decision by the Pope within the context of what is coming to be known as “Vatileaks”.

To replace Balestrero, the Pope has named a Monsignor from Sliema, Antoine Camilleri, a suave and extremely pleasant person who enchanted all who came to know him both in Stella Maris parish in Sliema and in Gzira, where he spent his first years as a priest. Mgr Camilleri is also a lawyer and has spent years in the Vatican foreign service. He is the brother of well-known author and historical research student Maroma Camilleri.

His new post normally entails his being promoted to a bishopric at least.

A better understanding of what Mgr Camilleri may be heading into comes from understanding Mgr Balestrero’s real role over the past three years in the same job.

A native of Genoa, Mgr Balestrero was very close to Cardinal Secretary of State Bertone (who also hails from Genoa) and he has been handling some very delicate cases in the past, such as the troubled relations with Israel and China but, even more importantly, issues concerned with the Vatican’s troubled finances.

He was reportedly involved in decisions regarding the Vatican bank, IOR, which is at the centre of difficult investigations, all related to repeated and frustrated attempts to get more transparency in its affairs.

Mgr Balestrero was also in charge of the Vatican’s approach to Moneyval, trying to get to the White List of transparent financial jurisdictions, but this seems to have failed. Last 1 January, the Italian Central Bank blocked all ATMs in the Vatican because, it said, it could not be sure about the transparency of banking transactions. As a cardinal was reported in the Italian press as having said, there could be Bin Laden’s money deposited in IOR and no one would know.

All this and much more has been revealed through Vatileaks, the massive compilation of papers which passed through the Pope’s office and were passed on to a journalist by the Pope’s own butler and later published as the book Sua Santita. They reveal a thorough web of intrigue and obscure