Even on his deathbed, Pope Francis didn’t pause from pursuing a dogged campaign that distinguished his reign: reforming the Vatican’s infamously troubled finances. On February 27, the pontiff’s 13th day at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital suffering from exhaustion and bronchitis, the pontiff unveiled the formation of a high-level commission assigned to raise donations for helping plug chronic budget deficits. Francis launched the fund-raising enterprise as a gambit aimed at blunting demands by top officials in the Curia, his vast administrative arm, that the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics halt his drive for deep spending cuts. The bureaucrats bristled at the Pope’s recent draconian moves: Since 2021, he'd slashed salaries for the Church’s 250-odd cardinals three times. In 2023, he nixed the rich housing subsidies for elite staff, and last September for the first time in decades demanded that the Vatican set a rigorous timeline for achieving a “zero deficit” regime.
When Pope Francis passed away at age 88 on Easter Monday in his modest Vatican apartment, his brave campaign had made big strides, but stopped short of the promised land.
