Cardinal Pell, former archbishop of Sydney and now Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy in Vatican City, has appointed the archdiocese business manager, Danny Casey, to his office. The pair will work out of Saint John's Tower in the Vatican, a building usually reserved for VIP guests or the Pope if his apartments are unavailable.

Mr Casey told priests in Sydney his office ''will be central to the establishment of new policies, systems and practices''.

Mr Casey's abilities as a financial manager were revealed before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse earlier this year when it held hearings on the Catholic Church's handling of child sex abuse complaints.

The commission heard that under Mr Casey's stewardship, the archdiocese's assets nearly doubled between 2004 and last year to more than $1 billion. In 2007, the surplus was $43.95 million, in 2006 it was $19.6 million, and last year $9.2 million, much of it coming from real estate sales. The archdiocese is understood to be the wealthiest in the country. It does not pay income tax or capital gains tax.

But the healthy balance sheet led to suggestions that the church's payouts to sexual abuse victims - the average figure was $83,200 - were too small.

Commission chairman Justice Peter McClellan put it to Mr Casey that ''the state of these funds is such that it would be possible for the church to spend significantly greater monies'' to assist people who had been abused.

''There is always opportunity to redirect additional expenditure,'' Mr Casey replied.

Cardinal Pell and Mr Casey have been charged with reforming the Vatican's byzantine and deeply corrupted finances.

The most recent monetary scandal involved the church's No. 2 under Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who was accused of using his influence to steer $US20 million in Vatican bank loans to a film company run by a friend, who lost the money.

The Vatican has been consistently criticised for a culture of corruption, nepotism and cronyism.