The Passion of the Bureaucrats

Tim Parks reviews Avarizia: Le Carte che Svelano. Ricchezza, Scandali e Segreti della Chiesa di Francesco, by Emiliano Fittipaldi, and Merchants in the Temple: Inside Pope Francis’s Secret Battle against Corruption in the Vatican, by Gianluigi Nuzzi, translated by Michael Moore, at London Review of Books.

"As we read of the growing tension between pope and Curia we realise that some major upset must have occurred to cause someone inside the Vatican to make so much explosive material available to the press, someone certainly opposed to the old guard, but perhaps not entirely convinced by Pope Francis either."