Napierski (left), a fake bishop, poses with Cardinal Sergio Sebiastiana as the cardinal arrived for talks ahead of a conclave to elect a new pope at the Vatican.

Reuters/Vatican City

Catholic cardinals in a closed-door meeting ahead of the election of a new pontiff want to be briefed on a secret report into leaks about alleged corruption and mismanagement in the Vatican, a senior source said yesterday.
More than 140 cardinals began preliminary meetings to sketch a profile for the next pope following the shock abdication of pope Benedict XVI last month and to ponder who among them might be best to lead a church beset by crises.
The meetings, called “general congregations”, are open to cardinals regardless of age, although only those under 80 will later enter a conclave to elect a pope from among themselves.
The source, a prelate over 80 who was present at yesterday’s meetings, said that the contents of the report came up during the morning session but declined to say if the requests to be briefed were made in the formal sessions or informal coffee break discussions or both.
“They want to be briefed on the report,” said the cardinal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “But it is a very long report and technically it is secret.”
The report was prepared for Benedict, who is now “Pope Emeritus”, by three elderly cardinals who investigated the so-called “VatiLeaks” scandal last year. The three are attending the preliminary meetings but will not enter the conclave.
Paolo Gabriele, the pope’s butler, was convicted of stealing personal papal documents and leaking them to the media.
The documents alleged corruption and infighting over the running of its bank. Gabriele was jailed and later pardoned by Benedict.
Benedict decided to make the report available only to his successor but one Vatican official said the three elderly cardinals who wrote it could “use their discernment to give any necessary guidance” to fellow cardinals without violating their pact of secrecy about its specific contents.
At two news conferences yesterday, both the Vatican spokesman and two American cardinals refused to be drawn on the report and whether cardinals had asked to be briefed on it.
Specific matters discussed at the preliminary meetings are covered by secrecy.
“Certainly, there can be various members of the college of cardinals who want information they feel is useful or pertinent to the situation of the curia,” spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said, referring to the central Vatican administration.
Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George was equally coy when asked if cardinals wanted to be briefed on the report.
“As far as the state of the church here in Rome is concerned, I would imagine that as we move along there will be questioning of cardinals involved in the governing of the curia to see what they think has to be changed and in that context anything can come up,” George said at a separate news briefing.
Cardinals will be using the meetings this week to get to know each other and decide when to start a conclave to choose a man to lead the 1.2bn-member church.
The Vatican appears to be aiming to have a new pope elected next week and officially installed several days later so he can preside over the Holy Week ceremonies starting with Palm Sunday on March 24 and culminating in Easter the following Sunday.
“The thing that is in the back of all our minds, I think, is Holy Week. We’d like to be done before Holy Week starts, have a pope, and we all go back to our dioceses,” George said.
High on the agenda at the general congregations will be the daunting challenges facing the next pontiff, including the sexual abuse crisis in the church and the VatiLeaks scandal.
“We need a man of governance, by that I mean a man who is able with the people he chooses to help him in an intimate way to govern the church,” Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the former Archbishop of Westminster in London, told BBC radio. “Among the things we will be talking about out here are precisely the need in looking for a new pope for these failings that have happened again to be treated, to be faced strongly.”
The cardinals will hold one or two meetings a day.
The date of the conclave will be decided after all the 115 cardinal electors arrive.


Fake bishop tries to sneak into Vatican meeting

A man dressed up in fake ecclesiastical robes was escorted out of a meeting of Catholic cardinals by Swiss Guards yesterday after trying to sneak into the closed-door Vatican meeting.
The man, whose real name is Ralph Napierski, had told reporters that his name was “Basilius” and that he was a member of the “Italian Orthodox Church”, which does not exist.
Before he was discovered, the “bishop” told reporters that Catholic bishops had “made a mistake by moving priests” who were accused of paedophilia around different parishes.
He was wearing a purple scarf around his waist that was similar to the sashes warn by senior Catholic prelates and he shook hands and chatted with priests and cardinals arriving at the meeting.
Napierski claims on his blog that he is a founder of the Corpus Dei Catholic order.
He also says he invented “a system to enable persons to control computers with the power of thoughts”.
He also promotes something called “Jesus Yoga”.