Vatican auditor sues over ouster as new dirty laundry aired

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican’s first auditor general and his deputy have sued the Holy See for 9.3 million euros ($9.5 million) for wrongful dismissal, as a new litigious chapter opens in Pope Francis’ troubled financial reform effort.

In a lawsuit made public Thursday, Libero Milone and his deputy, Ferruccio Panicco, alleged that Vatican gendarmes essentially extorted them by forcing them to resign in 2017 or risk arrest and prosecution for their work investigating and auditing the Holy See’s murky finances.

In the lawsuit filed with the Vatican tribunal, the auditors said they uncovered astonishing financial malpractice in the “viper’s nest” of the Vatican and believe they were forced out because certain cardinals and monsignors “felt threatened by the investigations and simple requests for clarification.”

The Vatican spokesman’s office declined to comment Thursday.

The Milone scandal is just one of many that have marked Francis’ 10-year effort to impose international financial budgeting and auditing standards on the Holy See’s opaque finances. The lawsuit, and its host of previously confidential attachments, now threatens to expose more potential wrongdoing and even problematic decisions by Francis himself.

Already, a criminal trial has been under way for over a year in the Vatican courtroom concerning the Holy See’s 350-million-euro investment in a London property; prosecutors have charged 10 people with a host of alleged financial crimes, including embezzlement and fraud. The defendants have denied the charges and said the Holy See simply was in over its head.

The lawsuit, which involves many of the same characters as those in the criminal trial, suggests the pope's flip-flopping reforms and allegiances have generated spasms of retaliation and retribution...