On Tuesday, 15 May 2018, cardinals from all parts of the world gathered in a hall inside the Vatican for a meeting of the Council of the Economy, the restricted committee, which helps the Pope manage the finances of the Catholic Church.
Apart from the cardinals, there were present some lay people, including three women, all members of the same council. The meeting was presided over by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State, in practice the prime minister of the Vatican State.
In front of them, the members of the committee had a document, a draft statement to be approved by them and addressed to the Pope, in which they stated that the Vatican's recurrent and structural deficit was risking default.
This was, obviously, before the Covid pandemic closed all churches, banned travel and saw the economies of many countries collapse.
The Church's financial situation must have degenerated since then.
At the 15 May meeting, the coordinator of the council, Cardinal Reinhold Marx, Archbishop of Munich, asked by Cardinal Parolin to explain the draft statement, turned to the vice-coordinator, the Maltese Joseph F. X. Zahra, and asked him to explain the document to those present.
Zahra is well-known in Malta as a former chairman of Bank of Valletta and of Maltacom. He also spearheaded the introduction of the euro.
He has been involved with the Vatican finances since 2014 when, along with his colleague at BOV, Franco Vermiglio, from Messina, he was invited by the new Pope to form part of the Vatican's Council for Economic Affairs (Cosea).
When in 2018, he was explaining how the Vatican was facing default, Zahra was actually explaining repeated failures over five years to get a grip on the situation.
Those first five years were plagued with exploding scandals regarding the Vatican bank and also allegations, later dropped, that Zahra was the source of leaks to Gianfranco Nuzzi for an earlier book that claimed financial scandals in the Vatican.
After five years of efforts, nothing concrete had been registered and, as we shall see, there were entire areas that had slipped out of scrutiny.
The situation then, Zahra continued, was that unless urgent corrective action was undertaken, the Vatican would not be able to pay its pensioners, let alone help the churches in the poorer parts of the world.
The past five years had been spent in vague promises but nothing concrete.
Over a period of time, what looked at that time as a series of unconnected events came to be looked upon as a consistent trendline.
For instance, Pope Francis had chosen a well-respected Dutch expert, Libero Milone, with long years at the top of Deloitte International, to investigate some of the scandals centring on the Secretariat of State.
One day it was found that somebody had entered his office and subtracted some files from his computer. Access to the Pope became difficult. Then Milone was sent for by the head of the Vatican police and threatened with arrest over an unspecified crime. He resigned.
Another case regarded Cardinal Pell, an Australian, who began investigating the Secretariat of State. He was accused of child abuse and even incarcerated until he was recently freed from the charges.
Another name which surfaces was Cardinal Becciu, previously a big shot at the Secretariat, who has since (beyond this book's scope) been demoted by the Pope himself.
In short, anybody who tried to investigate the trail of money escaping from all efforts at centralisation and control, suddenly faced charges that could render him out of action.
The overall structure of the Vatican, as also in many churches in many countries, is quite disorganised, and very reluctant at any effort to be brought under central control.
According to this book, the main culprit was the Secretariat of State which secreted in its folds all sorts of accounts with substantial amounts of money, managed by certain priests with the minimum of oversight.
It was found, for instance, that the Vatican had three banks and that not even the Pope knew of the existence of one of them.
The main bank, of course, is the IOR, which became notorious in previous years due to the autocratic management by Archbishop Paul Marcinkus and its involvement with Licio Gelli, Roberto Calvi and the lot.
It was noted that with the accession of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, hundreds of account holders, not all priests who somehow had accounts at IOR, hurriedly emptied their accounts.
The book tells of Pope Francis' investigations which found that four cardinals with whom he regularly exchanged the kiss of peace had fat accounts that they could never have built up with their past careers in the Church. Others dabbled in stocks and shares. Others invested in real estate. Many Vatican offices own prime properties around Rome but the money they get is ludicrous since most are rented for free to certain monsignors and others are rented at nominal rents.
Then of course there is the investment in choice high-quality apartments in London.
And some cardinals reside in high quality residences inside the Vatican itself while the Pope chose to live at the Santa Marta residence with other priests.
Zahra terminated his role in the Vatican where he was appreciated by the Pope after the date covered by this book, so we do not know the reason for his decision, if we ever get to know it.
But this book, and the ones before it by this author - Vaticano Spa, Sua Santita', Via Crucis and Peccato Originale - go a long way to explain to us laymen what is going on behind the Bronze Gates and what solitary battles this Pope (and the one before him) have been waging against the organised cupidity of people who say they have renounced riches and power.