Dow Up To Five Year High
ANDERSON: CNN. You're watching Connect the World. Top stories this hour. A final public farewell for Pope Benedict XVI. Huge crowds cheered and waved as the Popemobile made its way through St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. The pope told the crowds he is stepping down Thursday for the good of the church. A late rally on Wall Street helped the Dow soar to a five year high today. It ended up 175 points to close at 14,075. Investors encouraged by upbeat housing data and more indications that the Fed, the Federal Reserve continues to support economic stimulus. And some news just coming into us here at CNN Center. Shares in Groupon, the online voucher site, have plunged more than 20 percent. That's after the company reported a much bigger quarterly loss than expected. Do watch those on the open on Thursday. US Secretary of State John Kerry is in Rome for talks on the conflict in Syria after meeting with the French president and the French foreign minister in Paris Wednesday. During a news conference, the top -- new top US diplomat says that France and the US are looking at ways to, and I quote, "accelerate the political transition in Syria." An employee killed two people before shooting and killing himself at a lumber plant near the Swiss city of Lucerne. Police tell local media that seven people were hurt in the shooting, six of them seriously. The gunmen had worked for the wood panel manufacturer for quite some time. His motives are still not known. Well, the pope acknowledged stormy waters in his good-bye message to the faithful earlier today, but he says he knew the boat would never sink because God was with them.</s>POPE BENEDICT XVI (through translator): Dear friends. God leads his church and sustains it always, especially in difficult moments. Let us not lose this vision faith, which is the only true vision of the path of the church and the word. In our hearts, in the heart of each of us, have always the delightful certainty that the Lord is near you, that he doesn't abandon you, that he's close to you and that he shelters you with his love. Thank you.</s>ANDERSON: Well, it is no secret that the Vatican has been beset by scandals, but they don't stop at sex abuse. The last year, explosive leaks from the pope's ex-butler painting a picture of deep-seated financial corruption within the church. It's led many to speculate that this may be behind the pope's departure. CNN's Jim Bittermann reports at what's being dubbed "Vati-leaks."</s>JIM BITTERMANN, CNN SENIOR EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As much as sexual scandals and innuendo have come to a boil in the last days of Pope Benedict XVI's reign, what is proving equally damaging to his legacy are the simmering stories of disarray, corruption, and infighting in the management of the Vatican. The pope himself has repeatedly over past months made references to it.</s>POPE BENEDICT XVI (through translator): The sins against the unity of the church, of the divisions in the body of the church, living Lent in a more intense and evident ecclesial communion, overcoming individualism and rivalry.</s>BITTERMANN: The secret documents leaked last year by the pope's butler, according to the reporter who first published them, painted a devastating picture of an isolated pope surrounded by members of the Italian curia who actively impeded his efforts, something that surprised the author.</s>GIANLUIGI NUZZI, AUTHOR (through translator): The pope's loneliness in front of what is happening in the Vatican. A pope that was alone and was left alone. A pope who was a great theologian but who hasn't succeeded in bringing forth his reforms in the battle for transparency.</s>BITTERMANN: In fact, Nuzzi, whose book is now coming out in English, entitled "Ratzinger Was Afraid," believes the butler took the risk of leaking the documents precisely because he believed making the public would help the pope in his battle to restore order.</s>BITTERMANN (on camera): According to Nuzzi, the corruption that the pope tried but failed to root out including kickbacks on government contracts, money laundering, and influence peddling among other things. And the author paints Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone as the villain in the piece.</s>BITTERMANN (voice-over): It was Bertone who very publicly heaped lavish praise on the departing pope at his last public mass, to which the pope dryly responded --</s>POPE BENEDICT XVI: Grazie. Torniamo preghiera.</s>BITTERMANN: "Thank you, and let's get back to prayer" Many of the accusations of mismanagement center around the Vatican bank, as they have for decades. The bank, which is not a bank at all but a kind of wealth management fund, which oversees billions of dollars in investments, first attracted attention in the 1980s when an Italian banking official was found hanging from a bridge in London. It was classified a murder, but never solved. The banker had done business with the Vatican institution, and is then director, American archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who Italian police unsuccessfully tried to arrest. Eventually, he was forced to retire. Last year, as the butler's stolen documents came to light, the bank's board of directors fired its president saying he was not up to the job. Early this month, the pope named a replacement, but not until Italian banks, citing a lack of transparency, cut of all services to the Vatican, including credit cards. The problem, experts say, is that the Vatican is not subject to any financial controls other than those set by the Vatican itself, and author Nuzzi is convinced each time the pope tried to change the rules, his attempts were frustrated.</s>NUZZI (through translator): You can keep on believing in the fable that the pope has resigned because he is tired, but I don't believe it.</s>BITTERMANN: Jim Bittermann, CNN, the Vatican.</s>ANDERSON: Well, the Vatican flatly denies those corruption allegations, but like it or not, the organization is under the world's spotlight at the moment. Scandals need to be addressed, and Pope Benedict's successor will inherit what can only be described, I think, as a fragile church at this point. CNN's senior Vatican --</s>ANDERSON: I'm going to get this wrong again.</s>ANDERSON: CNN's senior Vatican analyst, whose name is John Allen -- goodness gracious me, I'm getting tired -- is with me again tonight. There's certainly a sense that this is a beleaguered organization. But that -- is that just our sense? Is that the outside? What does it feel like inside these gilded halls, as it were?</s>JOHN ALLEN, CNN SENIOR VATICAN ANALYST: Well, I think if you talk to most Vatican officials -- and of course it sort of is my day-in and day-out work to talk to Vatican officials -- what they will tell you is that on the one hand, they feel a lot of this criticism is unfair or at least the good things they've done have been left out of the picture. But on the other hand, they also recognize they live in a world in which, in many ways, perception is reality. They know that the perception that the Vatican has dropped the ball on the sex abuse scandals, they know the perception that the Vatican is dirty in terms of its financial operations, is a huge impediment, it's a huge blow to the moral authority of the church, and they would like to move beyond that.</s>ANDERSON: Any organization that had the sort of scandals -- sort of doing the rounds about it would get some damage limitation in place. It would hire a big PR company and make sure it got its message right. Whoever runs this place going forward, and I'm alluding here to Vatican City, the spiritual and governed seat of the Roman Catholic Church, whoever runs it going forward is going to have to run it with a pretty iron fist. Who's it going to be?</s>ALLEN: Well, look. First of all, there's an old Roman saying that he who goes into a conclave as a pope comes out as a cardinal, which means trying to predict who this is going to be is a hazardous enterprise. But you asked the question, and I'm sort of paid to give you speculative answers, so let me go ahead. I would say probably right now, if you were going to do a top five list, I like to talk about the four Ss plus one, plus an O. So, Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan, Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer of Sao Paulo in Brazil, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, who's an Argentinian but a career Vatican official, and Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, a brilliant Dominican theologian from Vienna in Austria. And the plus one would be Cardinal Marc Ouellet from Canada, who runs the Vatican's department for naming bishops.</s>ANDERSON: Let's talk about the Canadian, because I know you know him, and also you fancy his chances. Why?</s>ALLEN: Well, for one thing, it's my job as a reporter to sort of do poll averages, as we would do in the Iowa caucuses, try to get a sense of who's in the lead. And if you talk to people in the know, including fellow cardinals, what you will find is that Cardinal Marc Ouellet enjoys enormous respect. He is seen first of all as a brilliant thinker, very much cut from the cloth of Benedict XVI, seen as a deeply spiritual and holy man.</s>ANDERSON: Can I offer a couple of observations about Cardinal Marc Ouellet as well? Because I know he's spent quite a lot of time in Colombia, so his Spanish is excellent. So to a certain extent, he can -- if you had a bloc that was moving towards thinking that the Latin American influence might be important, you might get that with this Canadian cardinal. I've also heard talk that because of the problems that have beset the US Catholic Church, despite the fact that the Americans would like to wrest control from the Europeans, who've held onto this place for years, they probably feel it's not going to go to an American this time. Would Marc Ouellet, would he sort of wear all the hats that would fit at least the voting bloc in North America to pursue his eligibility, as it were?</s>ALLEN: Well, you've named two very compelling hats that he carries. One is his connection with Latin America. The other is that because he's from Canada, he's well-known to the American cardinals, of whom there will be 11 in this conclave. It's the second-largest bloc after the Italians. I'll give you a third, which is, this is the Vatican, where they think in centuries. The New World is still new to them, and so the idea of electing someone even from North America would be seen, in a way, as a step into modernity, which would have a certain appeal.</s>ANDERSON: That's absolutely remarkable. John, always a pleasure. You'll be with us, of course, tomorrow night, when we'll be at Castel Gandolfo, which is where the pope will just have arrived, pretty much, at this time, and where he will stay for a period of time before he comes back to the Vatican, where he will be in isolation for, I guess, the rest of his time.</s>ALLEN: "Hidden from the world," in his language.</s>ANDERSON: You're watching a special edition of CONNECT THE WORLD. We're live from Rome. Coming up, Prince Harry is in Lesotho. He's been catching up with the locals and checking in on his charity's latest project. All the details after the break, and a humbling story from CNN's Robyn Curnow on meeting this young prince.