He Pope Francisco today, through a pontifical decree, special controls on operations carried out by Vatican organizations for amounts exceeding 150,000 euros and 2% of their assets.
“In accordance with the provisions of article 208 of the Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium, with regard to the criterion of value to determine which acts carried out by the Entities supervised by the Council of Economic Affairs require, ad validitatem, the approval of the prefect of the Secretariat of Economic Affairs, this Council establishes said criterion in a manner proportional to the financial capacity of the Entities,” argued the pontiff in the Apostolic Letter in the form of Motu Proprio on “the limits and methods of ordinary administration.”
“Taking this into account, in reference to the aforementioned value, it is established that said approval must be requested when the act exceeds 2% of the figure resulting from the average calculated on the total costs of the Entity that requires it, as results in the approved annual balances relating to the last three years,” added the Pope in the text released by the Press office of the Holy See.
In particular, the decree maintains that “in any case, for acts whose value is less than 150,000.00 approval is not needed”, setting a base amount for controls.
According to the text, “the ad validitatem approval procedure for acts of extraordinary administration must be concluded within 30 days from notification.”
For Francisco, “the lack of a response within said period is equivalent to the granting of the instance, unless it has been requested that the procedures or documentation be completed,” although “in any case, the procedure must be concluded in a maximum period of forty days”.
In the text, Jorge Bergoglio clarifies in any case that “against the decisions of the Secretariat of Economic Affairs, if the Entity decides to challenge them, it must present to it, within the peremptory limit of 15 days from the notification, the request for revocation or modification of the decision, stating the reasons”.
At the same time, in another decree released this Tuesday, the Pope established as criteria to be followed by the hiring of Vatican organizations “the sustainable use of internal funds; the transparency of the hiring procedure; equal treatment and non-discrimination of bidders; the promotion of effective competition between bidders, in particular through measures capable of combating agreements of illicit competition and corruption”.
In a decree that updates a Vatican norm on transparency from 2020, the Pope ruled today that those who “are resident or established in States or territories that have privileged tax regimes according to the provisions organized by international institutions, as defined by provision of the Secretariat of the Economy, or are owned directly or indirectly by entities resident or established in the aforementioned States or territories”, among other causes that seek to give greater transparency to the Vatican accounts.
In June 2020, Francisco had already decreed new purchasing legislation centered on “transparency, centralization and competition”, by which he would stop purchasing from companies and people that are based in tax havens or that have shareholders residing in those States. .
Source: Ambito
