When Pope Benedict in 2013 took the almost unprecedented action of stepping down from the papacy (given that all or most popes throughout history have served till death), rumors swirled that it was due to extreme irregularities and corruption within the Vatican's notoriously opaque finances. Ostensibly his stepping aside which paved the way for Pope Francis was due to declining health in old age, but speculation has persisted since that it was actually his inability to clean up the mess, or the fact that he was at the helm as scandals persisted.

Since then, further scandals and irregularities at the Vatican Bank have continued to emerge, with the latest in the past weeks being the "disappearance" of a whopping $1.8 billion. Mysterious transfers which eventually totaled to that amount were flagged coming into Australia over the past six years.