A financial watchdog on Wednesday urged the Vatican to fine tune its prosecution of senior clergymen and hire more investigators with financial expertise.

In a 275-page report on efforts to protect the city-state from the scandals that have plagued it over decades, the Council of Europe’s oversight body was broadly positive, not attributing only one unsatisfactory grade out of around fifty grades.

Since the first Moneyval report almost 10 years ago, the Vatican has made many changes in financial supervision and overhauled its bank.

“Internal control measures and procedures have improved considerably in recent years and the measures put in place are generally effective,” the report said.

In April, Pope Francis changed the law so that bishops and cardinals who work in the Vatican are tried by the same secular court that hears other criminal cases, and not by an elite panel of prelates. Read more

The new rules could affect Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who Francis sacked from a senior Vatican post last year after allegations of embezzlement and nepotism.

Becciu, who is also embroiled in a scandal involving the purchase of property in London by the Vatican Secretariat of State, has denied any wrongdoing in both cases. Read more

However, Vatican prosecutors still need to get permission from the pope to prosecute cardinals and bishops, just as parliamentary consent is required in some European countries to indict lawmakers.

Moneyval said this procedure should be established in a transparent manner, which “would also provide a clear deadline for completion”.

The report said the Vatican prosecutor‘s office and its police needed more financial crime experts, but noted that two more prosecutors were hired after the on-site assessment the report was based on.

Moneyval also deplored the length of legal proceedings.

The former Vatican bank boss and two other defendants were convicted of embezzlement and money laundering this year after a three-year trial following a five-year investigation.

Carmelo Barbagallo, head of Moneyval’s Financial Supervisory and Information Authority (ASIF), said he was “very satisfied with this assessment, especially given our situation in the past.”

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