"A Vatican Watershed on Transparency, and a New Tool for Reformers" by John L Allen Jr on Jul. 20, 2012

• http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/vatican-watershed-transparency-and-new-tool-reformers
• "On June 22, previewing an evaluation of the Vatican’s financial transparency by Moneyval, the Council of Europe’s anti-money laundering body, I wrote: “The report is probably destined to trigger confusing and conflicting headlines about how well the Vatican did.”

On cue, these headlines ran shortly after the report’s release on Wednesday, July 18:

• Associated Press: “Vatican passes key financial transparency test”
• AGI: “Moneyval flunks the Vatican”
• L’Espresso: “Moneyval passes the Vatican”
• RTE: “Serious failings identified in Vatican Bank”
• Sunday Times: “Report cites progress in Vatican anti-money laundering efforts”

Sometimes the juxtaposition actually came in the same piece. The Italian daily Il Messaggero ran a headline (“Moneyval: Still little transparency at Vatican Bank”) which was at odds with its own opening paragraph (“The Vatican Bank is not quite transparent, but almost, the report says.”)
Why the confusion? In reality, the Vatican probably did about as well as was reasonable to expect, but the report contains plenty of criticism too. ...
Never before has the Vatican opened its financial and legal systems to this sort of external, independent review, with the results made public. In centuries past, had secular authorities shown up to conduct such a review, they would have been fought off tooth and nail. For Moneyval, the red carpet was rolled out instead.
American lawyer Jeffrey Lena, an advisor to the Vatican on the Moneyval process, told me that evaluators were able to examine records of judicial and diplomatic cooperation, anti-money laundering certifications, accountancy management letters, foundation registry records, and other confidential legal documents. To say that the Vatican traditionally has been reluctant to grant such access is a bit like saying the Tea Party is lukewarm about Obama — in other words, it really doesn’t do justice to the depth of emotion involved..."