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Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast. I'm Damian Thompson.

It's only a few days since I interviewed Ed Condon, Vatican Bureau Chief of the Catholic News Agency,

about the Pope's sudden de-fenestration of his former chief of staff,

Cardinal Angelo Betchu,

following allegations that the latter used his position to steal or misuse

hundreds of millions of dollars of church money.

But since then, there have been two major developments,

one of them quite astonishing and the other merely profoundly disturbing.

And taken together, they suggest that, firstly,

Bechu's wrongdoing was even more spectacular than we imagined.

And secondly, that even if Bechou, who's been stripped of the rights of a cardinal,

is convicted of serious crimes, either by the Vatican State or by Italy,

the corrupt ethos of this pontificate will still be left largely intact.

So first, that astonishing development.

On Friday, the Italian press reported that Betu's former henchman,

Moncinea Palaska, is alleging that Betu transferred 700,000 euros to Australia

during the trial on fabricated sex abuse charges of Cardinal George Pell,

the former head of the Secretary for the Economy,

who quite simply had discovered what Betu was up to.

...