Pope's new financial rules for saint-making

Vatican City, March 11: Pope Francis has introduced new financial oversight of the Catholic Church's costly saint-making machine after two tell-all books revealed major abuses in the process.

The new regulations require external auditing of the Vatican bank accounts created for canonization as well as regular budgeting and accounting to make sure that hundreds of thousands dollars of donations for saintly donations are being used correctly.

The reforms also create disciplinary procedures in cases of misuse of the funds for each saintly cause, which the two blockbuster books estimate bring in around $550,000 each.

The books by two Italian journalists are based on confidential Vatican documents.

IANS