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Pope Francis

VATICAN. — The Vatican yesterday condemned the leaking of documents that according to a media report show a power struggle in the Holy See over economic reforms and excessive expenses by the cardinal charged with carrying them out.

L’Espresso magazine said it had seen minutes of meetings and emails showing mostly Italian cardinals felt that Cardinal George Pell had accumulated too much power.

Pell is an outsider brought by the pope to Rome from Australia to oversee the Vatican’s often muddled finances after decades of control by Italians.

Pope Francis was given a mandate by the cardinals who elected him in 2013 to clean up after a series of financial scandals, mostly involving the Vatican bank. Francis set up the Secretariat for the Economy last year and gave Pell, as its head, broad powers to clean up the Vatican’s often troubled and murky finances and bring them in line with international standards.

“Leaking confidential documents to the media in order to stir up polemics and fuel arguments is nothing new but it is always something to be condemned and is illegal,” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said.

Lombardi said it was “normal” to have disagreements on complex financial and legal issues and condemned the article as “undignified and petty”. — Reuters .