A source close to Cardinal Müller suggested that 'the campaign has perhaps now been launched to discredit the voice of orthodoxy,' noting that the German cardinal has 'been critical of Fernández,' the current head of the DDF.
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Gerhard Cardinal Müller and sources close to him have rejected the allegations of financial mismanagement and misconduct made against him in recent media reports.
“The reprinting of this story, which was already cleared up nine years ago, is obviously not for informational purposes, but clearly defamatory,” the German cardinal declared in a statement published by InfoVaticana.
“If people had realized, as Cardinal Pell did, that the dicastery did not lose a single cent in the end, they could have spared themselves the rehashing of a long-settled matter,” Müller added to Die Tagespost.
Media allegations
Last week, U.S. Catholic media outlet The Pillarissued a report suggesting that Müller’s time as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (subsequently renamed the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith) had been marked by “significant financial improprieties.”
Müller led the office from 2012 through 2017, when he was summarily replaced at the early age of 69 by Pope Francis after his first period of office came to an end. It was a shock move on the part of the Pontiff.
The Pillar’s report argued that Müller’s departure “came after financial problems at the DDF, which led to an investigation and the cardinal being ordered by the pope to repay hundreds of thousands of euros to his own department.”
Citing “sources familiar with the investigation,” the outlet reported that “tens of thousands of euros in departmental funds were kept in cash in office drawers and used as unreceipted discretionary funds by officials; that money meant for the DDF’s departmental bank account was instead deposited in Müller’s personal account; and that the cardinal gave a centuries-old conference table, used to convene the doctrinal office’s most senior meetings, to a personal friend.”
The Pillar’s report attested that Cardinal George Pell – former head of the Secretariat for the Economy – referred Müller’s CDF to the Vatican’s Auditor General following an investigation, which reportedly found that a sum of €200,000 was moved to Müller’s bank from the CDF’s account prior to an investigation by Vatican officials.
Francis, The Pillar wrote, ordered Müller to repay some €200,000 (approximately $218,583 US) to the CDF.
Müller’s removal by Francis as CDF Prefect sparked considerable speculation, with commentators pointing to his theological views as the catalyst. Müller was part of an unofficial group of strong conservative cardinals in the Roman Curia – George Pell, Raymond Burke, Robert Sarah – all of whom were either removed by Francis or, in Pell’s case, left their positions.
But the allegations against Müller pushed aside the hypothesis of a theological clash between him and Francis. The Pillar’s report did not argue that Müller had deliberately sought to use departmental funds for personal use but reported that it was the cardinal’s alleged mismanagement of funds which ultimately caused Francis not to renew his leadership of the CDF.
Cardinal rejects allegations
Müller responded via a series of statements issued to media outlets in the days following The Pillar’s report. InfoVaticana published a statement from the cardinal in which he called The Pillar’s report an attempt to “construct a financial scandal, as in cheap investigative literature.”
Müller explained that a long-serving economist at the CDF “shuttled money back and forth between the individual accounts of the Congregation.” While this was “not illegal,” the economist “had kept an unusually large amount of cash” but never allowed any to go missing, Müller’s statement added.
Such a statement was supported by a source close to the situation at the congregation, who told LifeSiteNews that the practice of “old employees” had been bringing the cardinal “into difficulties,” and that Müller himself was “not involved” in such financial matters.
The cardinal “had no access to the accounts,” the CDF source stated.
As for the claim that Pope Francis had instructed Müller to repay hundreds of thousands of euros, the cardinal told LifeSiteNews that “no one instructed me to pay anything back because the amount in that mission account was the property of the Congregation anyway.”
The money, he stated, “was not declared as my private property, but as the property of the Congregation of which I was Prefect. It was just a matter of transferring the amount back to another account of the Congregation where it was before.”
“For some reason, the administrator had transferred some money back and forth without my asking him to do so,” Müller added.
A source close to the cardinal told LifeSiteNews that Müller was not given money as a private individual, but money was given to him as prefect, “documented and under witnesses.”