BREAKING: Vatican official raided over London property deal investigation

February 18, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 1 Print

Vatican City, Feb 18, 2020 / 09:06 am (CNA).- Vatican authorities have seized documents and computers belonging to a senior curial official as part of an investigation into financial misconduct, the Holy See announced on Tuesday.

In a statement issued Feb. 18, the Vatican press office confirmed that investigators had raided the office and home of Msgr. Alberto Perlasca, the former head of the administrative office at the First Section of the Secretariat of State. The raid is part of an ongoing investigation into financial misconduct by officials at the secretariat.

“This morning, as part of a search ordered by the Promoter of Justice, Gian Piero Milano, and the deputy, Alessandro Diddi, documents and computer equipment were seized at the office and home of Msgr. Alberto Perlasca,” the Vatican statement said.

Perlasca was the head of the Secretariat of State’s administrative office from 2009 until July 2019, when Pope Francis appointed him Promoter of Justice at the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signature; chief prosecutor of the Church’s highest ecclesiastical court.

The statement confirmed that “the measure was taken in the context of the investigation into financial investments and the work of the Secretariat of State.”

Vatican authorities have been investigating financial activities at the Secretariat of State since October, when Gendarmes staged similar raids at the offices of the secretariat and the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority. Those raids resulted in the suspension of four staff at the Secretariat of State as well as the director of the AIF.

The raid on Perlasca’s home and office was in connection with “interrogations” of the five suspended officials, the statement said.

The investigation involves a complicated series of financial transactions through which the Secretariat of State acquired a luxury property development in London for hundreds of millions of euros. Two of the four suspended officials at the Secretariat of State were registered directors of a London holding company controlled by the secretariat.

CNA has reported that the property was acquired by the Secretariat of State in a staggered series of purchases financed through loans by two Swiss banks, Credit Suisse and BSI. BSI was subsequently closed by financial authorities for systematic failures to prevent money laundering activity.

The building, at 60 Sloane Avenue in west London, was bought from Italian financier Raffaele Mincione, who arranged the Vatican’s purchase through a string of his own companies and investment funds, making hundreds of millions of euros in profit from the deal.

The principle vehicle for the Secretariat of State’s investment in the property was Mincione’s Athena Global Fund, which was used by Mincione to make no-strings-attached loans to another of his companies, Time & Life SA, through which he made high-risk speculative investments for himself, and helped an Italian bank illegally evade financial regulations.

CNA has also reported that another fund in which the Secretariat of State invested tens of millions of euros has links to two Swiss banks investigated or implicated in bribery and money laundering scandals involving more than one billion dollars.

The raid on Msgr. Perlasca comes one day after Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the former sostituto at the Secretariat of State, told Italian media that “not everything was clear” about the London investment.

“So, I mean, did everything go well? No, there was something that didn’t go well,” Becciu told Huffington Post’s Italian edition.

Although he ommented on the details of the project’s financing, the cardinal insisted that he is not personally not under investigation, pointing instead to two suspended members of his former staff at the Secretariat of State, Msgr. Mauro Carlino and Dr. Caterina Sansone, both of whom reported to Becciu during his time as sostituto and were registered as directors at the London holding company responsible for the development.

If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!

Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.

Related Articles

No Picture
News Briefs

Analysis: How a papal handshake became an ‘extraordinary turning point’ for LGBT activists 

September 17, 2020 CNA Daily News 1

Denver Newsroom, Sep 17, 2020 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- L’Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, reported yesterday that Pope Francis “at the end of an audience” greeted a group of some 40 people, some of whom identify as LGBT, along with their parents.

The pope told the parents that “God loves your children as they are” and “the Church loves your children as they are because they are children of God.”

Although none of the reported words from Pope Francis are new, or doctrinally problematic, they have not been confirmed by the Holy See.

But the episode drew media attention.

The Spanish blog “Religion Digital,” directed by laicized Catholic priest José Manuel Vidal offered its own version of the episode, quoting anonymously one of those who met the pope: “In the painful journey that each one of us have made as LGBT believers, I confess that I would not have imagined that we would have reached this stage; to meet in audience with the Holy Father.”

“These are the words of one of the representatives of the Italian association Tenda di Gionata (Jonathan’s Tent), of LGBT parents and children. About 40 of its members were received at the Vatican yesterday,” Religión Digital wrote, suggesting that the group had a formal, private meeting with the pope.

The Spanish blog report of the events was tweeted by Fr. James Martin, generation more media buzz.

In fact, the group Tenda di Gionata was not received in a private audience, but met briefly by the pope during the massive greetings that follow his Wednesday general audiences. 

During the minute-long encounter, Mara Grassi, vice president of the association, presented Pope Francis with a Spanish translation of the booklet “Genitori Fortunati” (“Fortunate Parents”), a collection of mostly negative experiences that parents of those identifying as LGBT have had with the Catholic church. The groups also presented the pope a rainbow-colored T-shirt with the words “In love there is no fear,” a quote from 1 John 4:18.

Most of the initial coverage about the reported words of Pope Francis to Tenda di Gionata came either from L’Avvenire or the Italian socialist newspaper La Reppublica, both of which interviewed Grassi, a mother of four children, one of whom, who is 40, identifies as gay.

La Repubblica’s report included remarks from Grassi that suggest the Church’s doctrine is arbitrary or unfair.

“After I came to know that my son was homosexual, I suffered a lot because the rules of the church made me think that he was excluded from the love of God,” she said.

The L’Avvenire version of the meeting was described by journalist Luciano Moia as a historic event.

Moia offered this description of the encounter: “In the Church of Pope Francis, who wants to tear down walls and build bridges of acceptance and understanding especially with the most fragile and marginalized people, this morning’s meeting appeared to many parents as an extraordinary turning point, confirming that what is written in some recent ecclesial documents, from Amoris Laetitia to the Final Report of the Synod of Youth, can truly be translated into pastoral practice.”

Moia, the author of the book “Chiesa e Omosessualitá, Un’inchiesta alla luce del magistero di papa Francesco,” (Church and Homosexuality, an investigation under the light of Pope Francis’ Magisterium”), is longtime editor of a monthly insert in the official Catholic newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference. He has been a proponent for the Catholic Church to change its doctrine on homosexuality as expressed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, especially the concepts that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered,” and that they are “contrary to the natural law, and therefore, that “under no circumstances can they be approved.”

The pope’s reported remarks on Wednesday were an expression of the Church’s most basic truth: That God loves all people, and that his love is not conditional. Neither those remarks, nor his brief conversation with Tenda di Gionata, suggest an endorsement of the group’s positions, a change in Catholic doctrine, or a “turning point” of some kind in the pope’s pastoral ministry. Reports to the contrary may indicate more about the agenda of reporters than about the Gospel proclaimed by Pope Francis.


[…]

1 Comment

  1. Hypocrisy @ it’s best. It makes one wonder how the congregation are encouraged to be poor and give hard earned money cheerfully only to be deceived by those trusted in upper echelons to purchase luxury properties promised to be given to the poorest of the poor or build or restore old churches or homes for the retired priests, handicap, orphans or old folk’s homes, like Mother Theresa did for the love of God’s commands and His poorest people, who can not help themselves. This went way over what Jesus teaches about behaving like the worldly business man who used his talent for profit. Church contribution should be used to build the Kingdom of God and meet His Church people’s dire needs. Catholics are in the dangerous threshold of Judgment very similar to the Greek Churches of the Apocalypse!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

All comments posted at Catholic World Report are moderated. While vigorous debate is welcome and encouraged, please note that in the interest of maintaining a civilized and helpful level of discussion, comments containing obscene language or personal attacks—or those that are deemed by the editors to be needlessly combative or inflammatory—will not be published. Thank you.


*