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documents, data and information necessary for the execution of the tasks assigned to it.” In other words, the commission would have complete autonomy and access in its investigation. Its every question had to be answered, and confidentiality could not be used as an excuse.
    Zahra would work with seven other members: the coordinator and six advisors, “all appointed by the Supreme Pontiff”—according to the chirograph—“experts in the juridical, economic, financial, and organizational matters dealt with by the Commission.” Coordination and relations with the ecclesiastical world would be handled by the Secretary of the Prefecture, Monsignor Lucio Ángel Vallejo Balda, an Opus Dei member who had earned the trust of Francis. 4 The Pontiff knew that he was playing a dangerous game in attacking the entrenched centers of power. “The situation is of an unimaginable gravity,” he would say to his closest collaborators. Many anomalies within the Church structures “are rooted in solipsism, a kind of theological narcissism.” The basic problem is that a solipsistic Church “falls ill.” 5

    All the Commission’s Men
    The members of the Commission were almost all European, with the exception of George Yeo, an expert in economics and finance who for years had held ministerial positions in his native Singapore. 6 Well-known and respected in the East, he had also been Chief of the General Staff of the Air Force. At the Vatican, Yeo had an important admirer: the Australian cardinal George Pell, who was carefully following the Pope’s every move in order to earn a position for himself in the renewal of the Curia. 7
    The youngest member of the Commission, and the only Italian, was a woman: Francesca Chaouqui, thirty years old, born in a small town in the province of Cosenza to an Italian mother and a French father of Moroccan origin. She had worked previously at Ernst & Young, in the field of public relations and communications, prior to which she had learned the ropes at the influential law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe Italia. She was married to an IT specialist who had worked with the Vatican for many years. It would be her job to create the new department in charge of Vatican communications, from the press room to the daily newspaper Osservatore Romano .
    Another member of the Commission was Jean-Baptiste de Franssu, a French manager from the field of strategic consultancy. Cardinal Bertone had brought him to the Vatican and appointed him to various posts: in his first year at the Vatican, he had quickly risen through the ranks. 8
    A Spanish member of the Commission, Enrique Llanos, formerly of KPMG, was a personal friend of John Scott, vice president of KPMG Worldwide, a leading accounting and management consultancy firm.
    The most senior advisor was from France. Jean Videlain-Sevestre was also an expert in consultancy and investments, a businessman with significant experience at Citroën and Michelin. He immediately established the approach that his colleagues should take to the investigation: “Our Committee has to be beyond reproach, independent, and competent,” he wrote on the eve of the much-awaited first meeting of the group. Its job was to help the Holy Father achieve the objective he had first indicated as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires: “The new Pope must be able to clean up the Roman Curia,” he had told a religious group from the Schoenstatt movement. 9
    As their working quarters, the team chose a modest first-floor location in Casa Santa Marta: Room 127, just a staircase and a corridor away from the papal suite. The office would be dubbed “Area 10,” the sum total of its numbers. A more revealing nickname was coined by Nicola Maio, the Secretary of the Commission: “St. Michael’s Room,” after Michael the Archangel, the guardian angel of delicate tasks. (The winged Archangel Michael, with armor and a sword, is