Vatican bank’s ban on married couples puts latter-day ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in a bind

Getting married to another employee at the Vatican bank is now a fireable offence. The regulation is designed to combat nepotism and corruption, but it has already had a negative impact on a recent case of blossoming young love at the bank.

It also appears that the rule applies to all employees of the Vatican City State. The rule has only been triggered at the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), popularly known as the “Vatican bank”, due to a recent marriage between employees there, but it seems that the rule applies to employees working for any Vatican institution if they fall in love with a fellow Vatican employee and want to get married.

Described by Forbes as “the most secret bank in the world”, the IOR, in a recent note to the media, defended the new regulation that stipulates that if two employees decide to marry, their work contracts will expire 30 days after the wedding unless one of the two decides to resign beforehand, reports Rome-based media Crux.

“The objective of the Institute is exclusively that of guaranteeing conditions of equal treatment of all employees during their entire period of service, in addition to the hiring phase with respect to external candidates,” bank officials said in a statement defending the new policy.

“Given that the Institute has a little over 100 employees in just one location, without any branches, this rule is fundamental for preventing inevitable conflicts of interest of a professional sort among potential spouses, as well as possible doubts about family-related management among its clients and the broader public,” it added.

For those reasons, the bank insisted, the interests of sound management have to outweigh personal considerations:

“The Institute has to protect the prevalence of the public interest of which it is the bearer as a central entity of the Church,” the bank’s statement said. “Those interests, necessarily, must take precedence over the personal interests of individual employees.”

The reality of the rule is already being felt by a young couple working at the bank – though their names have not been made public, they have dubbed by local media as the bank’s “Romeo and Juliet” – who are currently on the 30-day countdown for being let go after getting married in a local parish on 31 August.

Their appeal to the bank’s directors has been turned down, leaving a direct papal intervention as the only way for the couple to keep their jobs. But Pope Francis is currently on a 2-13 September trip to Southeast Asia and Oceania, making it unlikely he’ll address the case before he returns.

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Even once the Pope is back in the Vatican, many observers regard it as a long shot that he’ll overturn the decision, since he was the one to approve the bank’s new rules, which are intended to combat potential nepotism and conflicts of interest.

The rule has been described as “bizarre” by the Rome newspaper Il Messaggero, in light of the Church’s staunch defence of marriage. The rule also follows another batch of rules issued by the Vatican at the end of June, which included prohibiting employees from cohabitating outside of marriage (thereby leaving employees rather caught between a rock and a hard place, not to mention facing increasing hurdles to ever finding love).

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The latest rule in question, Crux reports, reads as follows:

“In order to ensure equal treatment, the celebration of a canonical marriage between an employee of the Institute and another employee of the Institute, or of other administrations of the Vatican City State, constitutes a cause for loss of hiring requirements.”

The rule continues: “The loss of employment is considered to have been overcome, however, for one of the two spouses if the other ceases his or her employment relationship with the Institute and with other Vatican administrations within 30 days of the celebration of the canonical marriage.”

Not only are the bank’s employees daubed “Romeo and Juliet” facing, as a result, the imminent loss of their pay checks, they were recently suspended for several days, according to the Il Messaggero report, for having made their situation public; although many observers argue that the leaks didn’t necessarily come from the couple themselves but from other employees disgruntled by the situation.

Bank officials have acknowledged that they waited to apply the policy until the recent retirement of one spouse of the last remaining married couple among its workforce.

The controversy at the bank comes at a time when Vatican employees are expressing concern over the impact of financial reforms on their compensation and working conditions, notes Crux, alongside complaints about an apparent lack of dialogue between workers and their superiors.

“All is silent,” claimed a recent protest from the Association of Lay Employees, the closest thing in the Vatican to a union.

“We write, but those in charge, when questioned, struggle to give answers,” the association said.

According to IOR records, in 2023 the institute had 107 employees serving a total of 12,361 customers. Its client assets totalled 5.4 billion euros, its equity stood at 0.7 billion euros and it produced a net profit of 30.6 million euros.

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Photo: The Tower of Nicholas V, the seat of the IOR (the ‘Vatican bank’) inside Vatican City State. (Credit: Vatican Media.)

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