Thursday, June 11, 2020

Vatican Affairs. Pell's Payback At the Secretariat of State

accountability Catholic crime corruption finance Vatican Bank reform

There was a stir on June 5 over the arrest and jailing, at the Vatican, of Gianluigi Torzi, the financier accused of extorting 15 million euros at the secretariat of state, in the tawdry dénouement of the purchase of a pricey building in London, backed in 2014 by the secretariat of state itself with money taken to a large extent from Peter’s Pence.

The investigations are in the preliminary phase and the trial has not yet been set. But at the top of the Vatican curia the war is already on. Substitute secretary of state Edgar Peña Parra is in the sights of one of the suspects, Mauro Carlino, who in turn was the secretary of the previous substitute, Giovanni Angelo Becciu, now cardinal prefect of the congregation for the causes of the saints. And Becciu, who gave the go-ahead on the operation in 2014, has been made a target of criticisms by his direct superior at the time, cardinal secretary of state Pietro Parolin, while Angelo Perlasca, another top-ranking suspect, accuses Parolin of having approved the operation as well.

Everything suggests that the trial will spare no one. And likely in order to prevent other such disasters in the future, produced by out-of-control operations and by incompetent and unreliable executors, on June 1 at the Vatican a severe tightening of the rules was passed regarding public contracts stipulated by the Holy See, including those of “real estate,” a clear reference to the London operation.  (more...)


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