Antipope Leo XIV Centralizes Financial Control: Neo-Church Watchdog Stripped of Illusory Autonomy
The EWTN News portal (June 30, 2026) reports that the Authority for Financial Information and Supervision (ASIF), the Vatican’s financial intelligence and anti-money-laundering body, has been restructured under a new 12-article statute that abolishes its president and board, replacing them with a director and deputy director appointed directly by the antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) for five-year terms. The reform effectively reduces ASIF to a dicastery-like office subordinate to the Council for the Economy, eliminating the veneer of autonomy it previously claimed. The article notes this follows the turmoil of the Secretariat of State financial trial and searches of ASIF offices by Vatican gendarmes which compromised international cooperation. The new statute mandates annual reports to the Council for the Economy and funding from the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) and the Governorate. This administrative centralization exposes the total subordination of the conciliar sect’s temporal apparatus to the will of a manifest heretic usurping the Chair of Peter.