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Cardinal Becciu defends actions, welcomes chance to ‘explain’

September 25, 2020 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, Sep 25, 2020 / 10:45 am (CNA).- The day after he was forced to resign from his Vatican job and to give up his rights as a cardinal, Angelo Becciu defended his actions and said he “is ready” to explain if called on by Vatican judicial authorities.

“I didn’t commit any crimes,” Becciu told journalists Sept. 25. “I received no communication on the part of the [Vatican] magistrates. I’m ready. If they want me to explain [my actions], I’ll explain.” 

“I’m maintaining my serenity,” he said. “I renew my trust in the Holy Father.”

Becciu spoke to journalists at an invite-only press conference near the Vatican Sept. 25. CNA obtained an audio recording of the press conference after it took place.

The cardinal responded to questions about actions he took while serving as “sostituto,” or the second-ranking official at the Secretariat of State, from 2011 to 2018.

New reports revealed that Becciu used millions of euros of Vatican charity funds in speculative and risky investments, and that he directed Vatican and Italian bishops’ money to go toward “loans” for projects owned and operated by his brothers. 

The speculative investments were made by financier Enrico Crasso, who, CNA has previously reported, was given by Becciu control over millions of euros in Vatican investment funds.

Becciu said Friday that he did not follow the actions of Crasso “step by step,” and that they met only once a year. According to Becciu, Crasso would inform him of what investments he was making, “but it’s not that he was telling me the ramifications of all these investments.” 

“I don’t know” what Crasso was doing, Becciu said.

According to the cardinal, investing Vatican funds was in his job description at the Secretariat of State. “Sure, we made investments,” he said. “We made them with the desire to make them in the interests of the Holy See, not my personal interests.”

Crasso manages Centurion Global Fund, an investment fund used by the Secretariat of State, with links to two Swiss banks investigated or implicated in bribery and money laundering scandals. As CNA reported, this is the same fund in which the Vatican Secretariat of State invested millions of euros, including with money donated to Peter’s Pence, an annual collection undertaken by the Holy See.

Reports show that the fund’s investments lost money while its managers, who include Crasso, recouped millions in fees.

Crasso also reportedly introduced Becciu to Lorenzo Vangelisti, CEO of Valeur Group, an asset management, advisory, trading, and real estate company.

Vangelisti was involved in the Vatican’s purchase of the Sloane Avenue property in London, together with the director of Valeur capital, Alessando Noceti, who worked previously for Suisse Credit in London.

Becciu denied that he knew either Vangelisti or Noceti. “I don’t know who they are,” he said. “I have never met them.”

The cardinal said that he and Pope Francis did not discuss the London property during their roughly 20-minute meeting Thursday. He also denied that any money from Peter’s Pence was used to purchase the property at 60 Sloane Avenue.

The cardinal described the meeting with the pope and his subsequent resignation as “surreal,” because “yesterday, until 6:02 p.m., I felt I was a friend of the pope, a faithful agent of the pope … and then there, speaking, he tells me that he no longer trusts me.”

“That he no longer trusts me because he had seen reports from the [Vatican] magistrates that I had embezzled,” he said.

After the cardinal resigned as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, a position he had been in since September 2018, the pope asked him to also resign the “privileges” of cardinals, Becciu noted.  

The embezzlement reports, Becciu said, claimed that when he was sostituto he had misappropriated 100,000 euros to give to a cooperative owned by his brother, and which was part of the charity of his former diocese.

Becciu said he tried to explain the action to Pope Francis, saying that it was true he had gifted 100,000 euros, but it was sent to the Ozieri diocesan Caritas from Vatican funds intended for “various” charitable works, and thus was legitimate.

He said the accusation that the money had gone instead to his brother’s cooperative connected to Caritas “seemed strange” to him, and that when he called his brother and the bishop to ask about the money, they confirmed to him that it was in the Caritas accounts, yet untouched.

Asked if he thought that matter constituted a conflict of interest, since his brother works for the diocesan Caritas, the cardinal said, “a conflict of interest? I don’t know if it really was a conflict of interest. I wanted to help the diocese, not my brother, the diocese.”

A press release from the Bishop of Ozieri and president of the diocesan Caritas, Corrado Melis, Sept. 24 said the diocese “has never been the beneficiary” of undue or illegitimate favors.

Becciu is also reported to have used his connections to help two other brothers, from the time when he was apostolic nuncio in Cuba and Angola.

He quibbled with details of the L’Espresso report, which said that his brother’s carpentry company was given ecclesiastical projects in the two countries. According to Becciu, in Angola his brother only helped to repair “two doors” at the nunciature, and in Cuba, his brother did the renovations at the nunciature because “it was difficult to find” materials in Cuba, so they imported them from Italy.

To his third brother, who owns a food and beverage distributor, called Angel’s, Becciu said “he never gave money, not mine nor that of the institution” of the Church.

He also indicated proof should be given or he “will sue for defamation.”

Becciu’s family released their own statement Sept. 25, calling the reports “unfounded and maliciously false…” as well as “slanderous, offensive and disparaging.” 

They said Francesco Becciu had carried out “some carpentry work on behalf of ecclesial entities” but they are “not attributable to Cardinal Becciu.”


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Vatican reaffirms euthanasia is ‘intrinsically evil act,’ calls Catholics to accompany the dying

September 22, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Sep 22, 2020 / 03:45 am (CNA).- In a new document released Tuesday, the Vatican’s doctrinal office reaffirmed the Church’s perennial teaching on the sinfulness of euthanasia and assisted suicide, and recalled the obligation of Catholics to accompany the sick and dying through prayer, physical presence, and the sacraments.

The document also addressed the pastoral care of Catholics who request euthanasia or assisted suicide, explaining that a priest and others should avoid any active or passive gesure which might signal approval for the action, including remaining until the act is performed.

Samaritanus bonus: on the Care of Persons in the Critical and Terminal Phases of Life is a new document by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), published Sept. 22.

The 45-page text, approved by Pope Francis on June 25, is signed by CDF prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria and secretary Archbishop Giacomo Morandi.

The letter presents Catholic teaching on a range of end-of-life issues, affirming the intrinsic value and dignity of every human life, especially for those who are critically sick and in the terminal stages of life.

The document’s introduction noted that “it is widely recognized that a moral and practical clarification regarding care of these persons is needed.” 

Pastoral accompaniment of those who expressly request euthanasia or assisted suicide “today presents a singular moment when a reaffirmation of the teaching of the Church is necessary,” Samaritanus bonus said.

It explained that closeness to a person who has chosen euthanasia or assisted suicide is necessary, but must always be ordered toward the person’s conversion.

The document recalled that a person who has made this decision, “whatever their subjective dispositions may be, has decided upon a gravely immoral act and willingly persists in this decision.” 

This state “involves a manifest absence of the proper disposition for the reception of the Sacraments of Penance, with absolution, and Anointing, with Viaticum.” In this situation, the congregation explained, the priest must withhold absolution.

“Here it remains possible to accompany the person whose hope may be revived and whose erroneous decision may be modified, thus opening the way to admission to the sacraments,” it continued.

It added that “to delay absolution is a medicinal act of the Church, intended not to condemn, but to lead the sinner to conversion.” 

The Church’s position in this situation “does not imply non-acceptance of the sick person,” the letter emphasized. Withholding absolution “must be accompanied by a willingness to listen and to help, together with a deeper explanation of the nature of the sacrament, in order to provide the opportunity to desire and choose the sacrament up to the last moment.” 

“The Church is careful to look deeply for adequate signs of conversion, so that the faithful can reasonably ask for the reception of the sacraments,” it said.

The purpose of the new letter, the CDF explained in the introduction, is to enlighten pastors and the Catholic faithful “regarding their questions and uncertainties about medical care, and their spiritual and pastoral obligations to the sick in the critical and terminal stages of life.” 

It said that there were particular situations today which require “a more clear and precise intervention on the part of the Church,” to reaffirm the message of the Gospel and its expression in the basic doctrinal teachings of the Magisterium, especially for the sick and dying and those who come into contact with them.

Euthanasia, the CDF letter affirmed, is “an intrinsically evil act, in every situation or circumstance” and “any formal or immediate material cooperation in such an act is a grave sin against human life.”

“Euthanasia and assisted suicide are always the wrong choice,” it said, because, as St. Pope John Paul II wrote in Evangelium vitae, “euthanasia is a grave violation of the Law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written Word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.” 

There is also “no right to dispose of one’s life arbitrarily,” it continued, which is why “no health care worker can be compelled to execute a non-existent right.” 

It is also “gravely unjust to enact laws that legalize euthanasia or justify and support suicide,” the congregation stated, and “such laws strike at the foundation of the legal order: the right to life sustains all other rights, including the exercise of freedom.”

“The existence of such laws deeply wound human relations and justice, and threaten the mutual trust among human beings,” the document continued. “The legitimation of assisted suicide and euthanasia is a sign of the degradation of legal systems.”

The CDF explained that according to Church teaching, euthanasia “is an act of homicide that no end can justify and that does not tolerate any form of complicity or active or passive collaboration.”

It said: “Those who approve laws of euthanasia and assisted suicide, therefore, become accomplices of a grave sin that others will execute. They are also guilty of scandal because by such laws they contribute to the distortion of conscience, even among the faithful.”

To take one’s own life breaks one’s relationship with God and with others. “Assisted suicide aggravates the gravity of this act because it implicates another in one’s own despair,” it said.

The Christian response to these actions is to offer the help necessary for a person to shake off this despair, it emphasized, and not to indulge “in spurious condescension.”

“The commandment ‘do not kill’ … is in fact a yes to life which God guarantees, and it ‘becomes a call to attentive love which protects and promotes the life of one’s neighbor,’” the letter said. 

“The Christian therefore knows that earthly life is not the supreme value. Ultimate happiness is in heaven. Thus the Christian will not expect physical life to continue when death is evidently near. The Christian must help the dying to break free from despair and to place their hope in God.” 

The letter affirmed that it is “a supreme act of charity” to spiritually assist the Christian at their moment of death.

“Death is a decisive moment in the human person’s encounter with God the Savior. The Church is called to accompany spiritually the faithful in the situation, offering them the ‘healing resources’ of prayer and the sacraments.”


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