Rome—The Vatican arrested a brace of alleged moles on the eve of publication Thursday of two books exposing financial malpractice at the top of the Catholic Church in what has been widely seen as a re-run of the VatiLeaks scandal that helped drive a demoralised Pope Benedict XVI towards his historic resignation.

            The new scandal comes in the opening phase of a new pontificate, with a strong, healthy – despite the rumours – and wildly popular Pope Francis at the helm. But it exposes the same malfeasance, careerism and squabbling that brought down his frail predecessor.

            The arrest of Monsignor Luis Angel Vallejo Balda, a Spanish priest and member of Opus Dei, and the glamorous PR consultant Francesca Immaccolata Chaouqui, for allegedly leaking confidential church documents to the authors, provided the new books with the PR boost from heaven.

            Both suspects had worked together on a commission to reform the finances and administration of the Vatican and had been appointed to their roles by Pope Francis himself. Ms Chaouqui was questioned and immediately released, while Mgr Vallejo, who had been secretary of the commission, found himself languishing in the same cramped Gendarmerie cell where the papal butler of VatiLeaks 1 had originally been held.

            Aside from the details of financial malpractice laid bare in the two books – Merchants in the Temple by Gianluigi Nuzzi, himself a protagonist of VatiLeaks 1, and Avarice by L’Espresso journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi – the affair raises questions about the wisdom of some of Pope Francis’ personnel appointments, illustrates the enormous difficulties his reform programme is encountering, and exposes the complex fault lines in the ongoing Curia power struggle.

            The fall of the pope’s two appointees offered an opportunity to say: “I told you so” to the conservative Vaticanologist Sandro Magister.

            In an article entitled “Halloween in Casa Santa Marta (the pope’s residence)”, Magister recalled that he had warned of the unsuitability of Ms Chaouqui and Mgr Vallejo for their Vatican reform roles.

            The ebullient Egyptian-Calabrian PR expert was known for her social connections and lively social media presence but possibly not for the kind of technical expertise that Mgr Vallejo’s commission required.

            She had run into trouble on Twitter for describing a cardinal as corrupt, an ex-minister as gay, and had been congratulated by the American Go-Topless association “for freely showing her nude torso”. She later claimed that her Twitter account had been hacked.

            Ms Chaouqui’s tweets on homosexuality were more in line with the views of hardline conservatives than with Pope Francis’ tolerant and inclusive approach. In one she denounced the suffering caused to a child by his father’s homosexual relationship, promising she would “always defend children from the abominable (yes, you read it right, abominable) pseudo love of those who desire a child out of selfishness”.

            Mgr Vallejo also seems to have lost Pope Francis’ confidence well before his arrest, having been passed over for a promotion in favour of the pope’s Maltese secretary, Alfred Xuereb.

            “It’s unfortunate that their unreliability was known of “ad abundantiam” since the moment Jorge Mario Bergoglio entrusted them with the stripes of the administrative clean-up,” Magister wrote in his blog. “The media/ecclesiastical circuit that daily praises the pope could not admit to doubts about the infallibility of these appointments. Until we reached the night of Halloween.”

            The Vatican’s extremely tough response to the leaking of the confidential documents is also hard to square with Pope Francis’ calls for administrative transparency, his frequent calls for forgiveness and author Nuzzi’s casting of his book as a contribution to the process of reform embarked upon by “this great, unique pope, called every day to count his friends so as not to remain alone”.

            In announcing the arrests the Vatican made it clear that the two were suspected of “a very grave breach of the pope’s trust” and that it was a mistake to think that what they had done was a contribution to the pope’s mission.

            For Nuzzi, the crackdown – with convicted moles facing up to eight years in prison under a Vatican law passed in response to the 2012 leaks scandal – has a dual purpose, emphasising to Vatican insiders that document security is of vital importance, and, in the wider world, distracting attention form his book’s revelations “so that people look at the finger rather than the moon”.

            One of the targets of criticism in Fittipaldi’s book is Australian Cardinal George Pell, called in by Francis to moralise Vatican finances but a stout opponent of the pope’s attempts to modernise church teachings on sexual morality.

            The cardinal is accused of spending half a million euros in a six-month period on lavish salaries for financial advisers, luxury apartments, furniture, fittings, air fares and clothes at a time when he was supposed to be reining in the extravagances of the Holy See.

            As a result it is not easy to identify clearly delineated power factions that will emerge weakened from the revelations or to predict the directions in which they may now push the church.

            The exposure of wrongdoing strengthens Bergoglio’s case that there is an urgent need for reform, but the suggestion that his modernisation programme might be ineffectual or badly designed – since the financial abuses continue – could also undermine him.

            La Stampa’s Vatican expert, Marco Tosatti, suggests the plans may be failing because they were over-ambitious or lacked sufficient, competent support within the church hierarchy. Those who elected him pope and today shared his table were among the people currently impeding his efforts to provide the Holy See with a system of governance fit for the 21^st century, he wrote.

            Both books provide plenty of evidence that senior churchmen continue to live their lives in blatant contradiction to the Christian message.

            Nuzzi recounts the tale of one Monsignor Giuseppe Sciacca who broke down a dividing wall in order to incorporate a room from his neighbour’s flat into his own apartment. When the neighbour, also a priest, returned from a spell in hospital, he found his personal posessions packed into boxes, and died shortly after.

            Pope Francis demoted Mgr Sciacca and forced him to move out: one fewer merchant in the temple, but many more to go.