Cardinal Farrell to lead Vatican investment oversight committee

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life. / Lucia Ballester/CNA.

Vatican City, Jun 7, 2022 / 05:49 am (CNA).

Cardinal Kevin Farrell will chair a new committee to oversee investments, the Vatican said on Tuesday.

The 74-year-old Irish-American cardinal will lead a committee of four finance professionals.

Since 2020, Farrell has also led a committee to monitor internal Vatican financial decisions that fall outside other accountability norms.

The investment committee was established by the Vatican’s new constitution, Praedicate evangelium, to ensure “the ethical nature of the Holy See’s movable investments according to the social doctrine of the Church and, at the same time, their profitability, appropriateness, and riskiness.”

The apostolic constitution went into effect on June 5, the feast of Pentecost.

Cardinal Farrell, who has led the Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life since 2016, is overseeing the preparations for the World Meeting of Families in Rome from June 22-26.

Pope Francis appointed the former Dallas bishop as camerlengo, or chamberlain, of the apostolic chamber, in 2019.

The camerlengo’s responsibilities include overseeing the preparations for a papal conclave and managing the administration of the Holy See in the period between a pope’s death or resignation and the election of a new pope.

Farrell will be joined on the investment oversight committee by John J. Zona, the chief investment officer of Boston College.

The other committee members are Jean Pierre Casey, founder and manager of RegHedge; Giovanni Christian Michael Gay, managing director of Union Investment Privatfonds GmbH; and David Harris, portfolio manager of Skagen Funds.