The Vatican is often portray themselves as a religious order, but it’s important to remember that they operate much more like a corporation that a religious order. However, there are often times when they like to blur the lines, and in the process of enriching themselves, some of the deals the Church involved itself in occasionally go bad. When that happens, they suddenly require the intervention of the secular legal system.

In a recent ruling in the UK over a real estate deal gone bad, the court is forcing the Vatican to turn over communication between two pontiffs who spoke about the deal over a variety of phone application. The Vatican had tried to argue special privilege, but the court was not having it:

In a landmark ruling in the High Court, a judge, Mr Justice Foxton, overruled the Vatican… and ordered that they should disclose the highly-sensitive correspondence.

The documentation is at the centre of what is known as the Vatican’s “trial of the century,” where British financier Raffaele Mincione is seeking to clear his name after being accused of defrauding the Catholic Church over a property deal.”

It’s quite hilarious that two of the priests involved tried to argue that their communication over electronic apps somehow fell into the sacred realm. They went so far as to claim that revealing the documents that the court requested in discovery would amount to “a grave sin”.

Imagine having to do business with a mega rich organization that will pretend that their special rights, which I have argued strongly has absolutely no business existing in the first place, extends also to business dealings. It just goes to show how little they value it moralistically. It is simply a tool to be used to their advantage, whenever possible. Only a gullible fool would believe that the intention of these protections are solely for the faithful. They are instead used to shield a secretive and sinister organization that covers up countless crimes.