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 Pillar issued 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.”
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Pell and Müller
A notable aspect of the case is the close relationship between Pell and Müller, both before and after the Australian cardinal’s time in prison, to which Pell had been sentenced after a miscarriage of justice.
The Pillar’s report stated that Pell’s officials “discovered a DDF official attempting to remove several plastic shopping bags of cash from the office premises, leading to a scene one official described as ‘extraordinary.’” Consequently, Pell referred the CDF to the Auditor General, The Pillar reported.
However, sources close to the situation have attested to LifeSiteNews that – as is no secret – Pell and Müller remained close collaborators on multiple projects in the Vatican, which would not have happened had Pell mistrusted Müller.
In information given to LifeSiteNews and also reported by Die Tagespost, Pell’s secretary said that the late cardinal “held Cardinal Müller in high esteem and always spoke of Müller with the greatest respect.”
Pell “understood the situation, how it had come to these irregularities,” a source close to the situation told LifeSite.
The two cardinals continued to work together on projects after Pell’s return to Rome, including their joint efforts to prevent heterodox German prelate Bishop Heiner Wilmer from becoming, as was rumored, the new head of the CDF.
Müller and Francis and the papacy
Bolstering its claim that Müller’s exit from the CDF was due to financial mismanagement rather than theological differences with the Pope, The Pillar wrote: “Following his departure from office, Müller emerged as a public critic of Pope Francis, claiming that the pope had ‘uttered plenty of material heresies’ and criticizing the ‘growing confusion about the doctrine of the faith.’”
However, prior to his 2017 exit Müller had already emerged as a vocal opponent of certain heterodox ideas in the Church championed by Francis and by those who enjoyed his support.
During the first Synod on the Family, Müller was quoted as opposing the synod’s scandalous mid-term report which encouraged homosexual relationships. He was reported as calling the document “Undignified, Shameful, Completely Wrong.”
Müller also opposed the German bishops pushing for a change in the Catholic teaching on marriage. In 2015, he warned that the tendency of German bishops to divide doctrine from pastoral practice was not unlike the abuses surrounding the Protestant split in 1517. One should “be very vigilant and not forget the lesson of Church history,” he said.
In May of 2016, Müller made several remarks in Spain which clearly opposed the Pope’s wish to allow Holy Communion to the divorced and “remarried.”
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While in office, the cardinal tried to downplay the differences between traditional teaching and the Holy Father’s position – sometimes to the dismay of Catholics – and even criticized the dubia cardinals. But it was then already clear, while he still held office, that Müller did not agree with Francis’ agenda.
As to the peculiar timing of the report by The Pillar against Müller, sources close to the situation have suggested it is “an attack to [discredit] the cardinal.”
A possible reason for this attack at this point could be “to disavow a potential papal candidate,” a source close to the situation commented.
Meanwhile, a source close to the cardinal suggested that “the campaign has perhaps now been launched to discredit the voice of orthodoxy,” meaning Müller, noting that the German cardinal has “been critical of Fernández,” the current head of the CDF.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) was renamed the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) in 2022.