The Vatican Files

Pope Leo XIV was elected in the shadow of a secretive and ferocious power struggle that saw the historic resignation of Pope Benedict and shaped the papacy of Francis.

The Vatican Files tells the inside story of the 25-year battle for control of the Church's wealth. Efforts to bring the Vatican's ancient, murky accounting systems into the 21st century were thwarted at every turn by the Curia and international political interests. A secret operation to seize control of the Holy See's one billion euros in cash assets coincided with the launch of a police operation halfway across the world in Australia, investigating historic child abuse allegations against Cardinal George Pell, the very man appointed by Francis to lead a sweeping clean-up of Vatican finances.

The Vatican Files charts the increasing tensions between the Catholic Church and the state in Donald Trump's America, and the Holy See's vexed engagement with Putin's war on Ukraine, and in China. It also reveals the efforts of the American right to block the election of the first American pope, and a clandestine influence campaign by billionaire tech bros from Silicon Valley.