Popes, Ricca, Swiss Guards and Janet Tavakoli

Janet Tavakoli is a finance and fiction writer, a polymath. Her finance writings include "Structured Finance and Collateralized Debt Obligations: New Developments in Cash and Synthetic Securitization..." and "The New Robber Barons"; her fiction, Archangels: Rise of the Jesuits (Volume 1), is about the Vatican, its finances and its temptations. 

She sent a note to the investment guru/social activist Andrew Tobias, published on his blog, about the recent declarations by the Pope regarding Monsignor Battista Ricca, who is alleged to have had a romantic affair with a Swiss Guard (among others).
It is quite interesting and is included here:

“The Pope appointed...[Ricca]... to clean up corruption in the Vatican Bank so, of course, Ricca had to be blackmailed. The Pope made it pretty clear that 1) his internal investigation did not match with printed reports of Ricca’s having real-time gay partners, but that 2) even if the reports of his past life and breaking vows are true, God forgives and forgets, so those looking to use this as leverage against Ricca are out of luck. In one swoop, the Pope disarmed them. So a priest is gay? Who is the Pope to judge. So he had a wild past? If he asked for forgiveness and received it, the past is just that.”
She then theorizes: “It may have gone like this: Ricca agreed to be the pope’s investigator, and others sought to neutralize Ricca with embarrassing information — real or fabricated. The pope just said: ‘So what, even if it was once true? You can’t blackmail me, because I’m not embarrassed about anything, and Ricca shouldn’t be either; Ricca has my support. Write anything you like. Then try to get a better life.’”
“A Pope,” she says, “has never done anything close to this in the history of the Church.”