CNA Staff, Jun 9, 2020 / 03:00 am (CNA).- Cardinal Angelo Becciu has said that the arrest of a businessman at the center of a Vatican property deal will have no wider repercussions and that business in the Vatican “will continue as before.”
Commenting on the June 5 arrest of Gianluigi Torzi, the former sostituto at the Secretariat of State said that he did not know the Italian businessman charged by Vatican prosecutors with fraud, extortion, money laundering and other crimes. Becciu also defended the investment of hundreds of millions of euros in the London property at 60 Sloane Avenue, and said it still represented good value for money.
“I don’t know Torzi, I was no longer sostituto when the facts that are attributed [Torzi] happened,” Becciu told Adnkronos after the announcement of Torzi’s arrest.
Before he was made a cardinal in June, 2018, Becciu was the second-ranking official at the Vatican Secretariat of State, which invested hundreds of millions of euros in the London property between 2014-2018. Torzi acted as a broker, a commission-earning middleman, for the Secretariat of State as it finalized the purchase in 2018 and 2019.
The Adnkronos report offers Becciu’s account of his role at the Vatican. Becciu insists that Torzi’s involvement in the project came after the cardinal had become head of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints in the summer of 2018, but that the original investment in the building was a sound decision.
“Are you sure that that building was a waste? But there has been no doubt that if sold now it would make double what it cost – 148 million euros when I was there, if there were other [additional expenses] then ask who made them, I was no longer there.”
On Saturday, the cardinal dismissed the idea that Torzi’s arrest would cause a broader “earthquake” in the curia, calling it “a journalistic fantasy.”
Becciu’s interview concluded with his declaration that “[Torzi] will have to answer for a specific crime for which he alone is responsible. And the Vatican will continue as before.”
CNA has reported that between 2014 and 2018, the Secretariat of State paid around $300 million for the building, bought from Italian businessman Raffaele Mincione. Mincione arranged the secretariat’s initial investment through an investment fund through which he managed hundreds of millions of euros for the Secretariat of State.
Completion of the sale was conducted through Gutt SA, a Luxembourg-registered holding company owned by Torzi.
According to a press statement from the Holy See, Torzi was arrested Friday in connection with “well-known events connected with the sale of the London property on Sloane Avenue, which involved a network of companies in which some officials of the Secretariat of State were present.”
In May, CNA reported that in November 2018, a lay official at the Secretariat of State was made a director of Gutt, for a period of one month. That official, Fabrizio Tirabassi, was suspended from his position in October, 2019, following a raid by Vatican investigators.
In his statements to Adnkronos over the weekend, Becciu repeated previous denials that the investment used funds from Peter’s Pence, a fund of donations sent to the Holy See by Catholics and dioceses around the world to support the ministry of the pope.
On Saturday, Vatican News reported that the investments made by the secretariat in Mincione’s Athena Global Opportunities Fund amounted to 200 million euros. It reports Mincione invested this money in the building, which he owned, and other ventures of Mincione’s, which it described to be a “conflict of interest.”
On Nov. 4, 2019, CNA reported that in 2015 Cardinal Becciu seems to have attempted to obscure on Vatican balance sheets nearly 200 million in loans connected to the transaction by cancelling them out against the value of the property in London, an accounting maneuver prohibited by financial policies approved by Pope Francis in 2014.
That apparent attempt to obscure the loans was detected by the Prefecture for the Economy, then led by Cardinal George Pell. Senior officials at the Prefecture for the Economy told CNA in 2019 that Becciu told Pell the cardinal was “interfering in sovereign business” by looking into the secretariat’s dealings with Swiss bank BSI.
BSI was closed by Swiss banking authorities in 2017, following an investigation which found systematic violations of anti-money laundering protections.
On Saturday, Becciu said that Torzi’s involvement in the London property deal came only after he had left the secretariat.
In May, CNA reported that Swiss authorities had frozen tens of millions of euros in several bank accounts as part of the Vatican’s investigation into the deal.
On June 6, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that among the funds frozen were several million under the control of Msgr. Alberto Perlasca.
Perlasca served under Becciu for nearly a decade as head of the administrative office of the secretariat’s First Section until July 2019, when he was transferred to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Holy See’s supreme court. Perlasca worked as a prosecutor at the court, until his office and home were raided by investigators in February.
In an interview with the newspaper Il Giornale on Monday, Perlasca denied that he had any Swiss bank accounts and is “ready to sue anyone who claims otherwise.”
Perlasca said that “there was considerable confusion, I hope not knowingly, between personal accounts and accounts of the Secretariat of State, on which, however, I had no signature power since only the superiors had it. I only had the power to sign in conjunction with another superior. I don’t remember ever having to use it, because there never was a need. In other words: I couldn’t move a single cent.”
Perlasca said he personally lodged a complaint against Torzi in 2018, alleging fraud by the businessman.
Corriere also reported that accounts belonging to Mincione have been seized by Swiss authorities as part of the investigation, as well as those under the control of Enrico Crasso, who has also managed Holy See investments through the Centurion Global Fund.
Crasso told Corriere that the accounts relevant to him were only under his management and not personal accounts. Previously, CNA reported on Centurion’s connections to several institutions subject to allegations of money laundering.
On Saturday, Mincione denied any relationship to Torzi beyond working with him as the secretariat’s chosen intermediary for the completion of the property purchase.
In an interview with Adnkronos, Mincione said that apart from knowing Torzi slightly as a social acquaintance, his contact with him was limited to Torzi’s mandate to act on behalf of the secretariat, given by Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, who replaced Becciu as sostituto in 2018.
Mincione insisted in the interview that his dealings with the secretariat were all legitimate, and that the Holy See could still realize a profit on the London property.
Mincione also appeared to imply that responsibility for Torzi’s involvement could ultimately lay with Pope Francis, saying “there is a picture of Torzi with the pope, which I have. [Torzi] was given this job by Peña Parra, [who was himself] appointed by the pope.” It is unclear why or how Mincione would have a photo of Torzi with the pope, especially if the two businessmen were not close.
CNA has previously reported that Torzi, along with his family, were received in a private audience with Pope Francis on December 26, 2018. Repeated requests, over several months, to the Holy See asking how the meeting was arranged have gone unanswered.
On the same day as Mincione’s interview with Adnkronos, a picture apparently showing Torzi and his wife with Pope Francis began circulating online.
Perlasca told Il Giornale that “It seems very bad to call the Holy Father directly into this matter.”
“I know that, at the end of December 2018, there was a meeting with him, to which however no representative of the Administrative Office was invited,” Perlasca said.
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Reading literature and poetry can enhance our Wisdom Bank.
About reading literature, Charles Darwin himself actually had something to say about his own desiccated narrowness and what has become Darwin-ISM:
“This curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a kind of MACHINE for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive.
“…A man with a mind more highly organized or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered. . . . The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be INJURIOUS TO THE INTELLECT, and more probably to THE MORAL CHARACTER, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature. . . . My power to follow a long and purely abstract train of thought is very limited; and therefore I COULD NEVER HAVE SUCCEEDED WITH METAPHYSICS or mathematics.”
(Charles Darwin, edited by Sir Francis Darwin, “Charles Darwin’s Autobiography,” 1887/New York: Henry Schuman 1950, CAPS added).
What might this reflective Charles Darwin have to say about now upending human sexual morality and personal “moral character,” on the basis of some newly-mutated “sociological-scientific foundation” infecting some poorly-read clericalist “intellects” in high synodal places?
The dominant culture is in free-fall and the leader of the Catholic Church has time to suggest that seminarians read literature. (You can’t make this stuff up.)
The human brain needs time to rest and be rejuvenated. A tired and overworked brain can’t think straight and is prone to errors, and the soul and spirt suffer from a constant interaction with bleak and often terrifying reality. We can’t spend all of our waking moments in battle–even our military organizations maintain recreational facilities for the soldiers, sailors, and pilots. We need physical exercise, and it doesn’t have to be Olympic-level workouts–just a slow short walk or some gardening outdoors will do for many of us. And we need relief from over-stimulation by the latest alarming news and from too much study of deep topics, including religious topics. I personally enjoy reading children’s literature–not just the classics, but charming series like the Laura Ingalls Wilder saga, the old mysteries (Nancy Drew, Dana Girls, etc.), and Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. I am also currently attempting to read everything that Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) wrote–and discovered his amazing novel about Joan of Arc! I’ve even written a series (mystery) of six skating novels for children and teens, but they remain unpublished by established publishers (and to any publishers reading this, they are filled with Catholic heroes and heroines!) Even the Lord Jesus took time away from his work on earth to relax!
I’ve encountered no public figure in my lifetime who ever impressed me more as being devoid of personal wisdom than Pope Francis. His rhetoric is a continuing monolithic expression of faith in inevitable progress if we all engage in some sort of never defined “listening” process to a never defined purpose. Repeated use of the name of Our Lord as linguistic prop to legitimize a generality does not complete an answer.
In theory, a religious man recognizes personal sin as the origin of all the evil in the world, its power to do harm occurs when large scale popular concessions are made to mythologies that promise exoneration from personal accountability. Humanity pursues accommodating dishonest falsehoods as passionately as honest truth, and honest minds understand this. A jealous and dishonest mind becomes spiteful towards those who have warned us that indiscriminate immodesty in ideas does not promote closeness to the single author of all truth, the creator of everything, instead casting this as a cynical, “rigid” denial of progress, but a progress never defined. Only a minority of honest writers have understood the tragedies of our vanities that call a lie a truth, and call what is true, too far. Many others have contributed to human brutality.
Yes. Woe to those of Isaiah 5:20…as it would be better for them to have millstones of Luke 17:2.
Reading Pope Francis’ letter to seminarians (linked in the first line of the article to the letter itself in the Vatican website) urging them to embrace and love literature is a breath of fresh air. For those of us who cherish the rich tapestry of Catholic literature, it is a welcome affirmation and a profound break from his magisterial, theological, spiritual, and moral discourses in his variety of official teachings and declarations. Pope Francis underscores the value of literature not just as an academic exercise but as a means of spiritual and moral enrichment. Pope Francis’ letter is a celebration of the enduring power of literature to nurture the soul and enhance one’s spiritual journey. For seminarians and all who seek to deepen their faith, delving deeply into the world of words and wisdom is an invitation to explore the rich intersections between faith, morality, and human experience. This guidance from the Pope is not just about reading; it is about engaging with literature as a means of growing closer to God and understanding the divine narrative that shapes our lives.
This papal view reminds me of the great Catholic literary figures whose works have long bridged the realms of faith, morality, and human experience. Dante’s epic journey through Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory is more than a grand narrative; it is a reflection on the human soul’s quest for divine truth. Similarly, J.R.R. Tolkien’s richly imagined world of Middle-earth is infused with themes of sacrifice, redemption, and the enduring struggle between good and evil, all grounded in a deep sense of Christian morality. Shakespeare, who is now more and more correctly identified as Catholic by literary critics, offers a treasure trove of insights into the human condition and the moral struggles that define our lives. His exploration of themes such as power, betrayal, and redemption echoes the moral lessons found in the scriptures and Church teachings. The viral tagging of Trump and the MAGA cult as “weird” reminds me of the three witches called the “weird sisters” in the Bard’s Macbeth.