Vatican

Vatican City, Oct 1, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).- The Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy released the 2019 balance sheet for the Roman Curia Thursday.

Fr. Juan A. Guerrero, S.J., the department’s prefect, told Vatican News Oct. 1 “the economy of the Holy See should be a house of glass.”

“We want the budget to explain how the Holy See uses its resources to carry out its mission,” he said.

The report comes a week after the resignation of Cardinal Angelo Becciu from the Roman Curia, which followed more than a year of reporting by CNA and other news outlets on various financial scandals involving Becciu and the Holy See’s Secretariat of State.

Guerrero told Vatican News he “reads the newspapers” and that “it is possible that, in some cases, the Holy See was not only badly advised but also cheated.”

“I believe we are learning from past mistakes or recklessness,” he said.

The Holy See balance sheet was also published as the Holy See undergoes an onsite financial inspection by Moneyval, the Council of Europe’s anti-money laundering watchdog.

The evaluation will likely include looking at the role of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), which functions as the Holy See treasury, sovereign wealth manager, and administers payroll and operating expenses for Vatican City.

In 2018, Pope Francis asked for Vatican investments to be centralized under APSA’s management.  

Guerrero said that the project of centralizing investments in APSA was advancing “little by little.”

The prefect also acknowledged that he made a request in April that all dicasteries transfer their liquid assets to APSA, saying he did it in anticipation of revenue loss due to Italy’s coronavirus lockdown. 

In May, Guerrero said that in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the Vatican is forecasting a reduction in income of between 30% and 80% for the next fiscal year.  

The Oct. 1 Holy See financial report for 2019 showed that the expenditure of the 60 curial offices for 2019 totaled 318 million euros (around $374 million) out of an income of 307 million euros.

The deficit of 11 million euros was smaller than the 2018 deficit due to 68 million euros in investment returns, the report showed. It said that the increase was “mostly attributable to the effect of the recovery of share prices in 2019.”

The report did not include financial statements for other Vatican entities which collaborate with the Holy See, such as the governorate of Vatican City State, the IOR, or Peter’s Pence, the pope’s charitable fund which comes from an annual Church-wide collection.

These institutions and others “present their results, and report to the corresponding authorities,” Guerrero said.

Despite not being part of the report, Guerrero said that Peter’s Pence covered 32% of the expenses “for the mission of the Holy See.”

The prefect said that Peter’s Pence in 2019 “collaborated with the mission of the Holy Father” for a total of 66 million euros, with 23 million coming from reserve funds in addition to what was donated in 2019.

Guerrero noted that this shortage has happened in the last few years, lowering the capital of Peter’s Pence overall.

The balance sheet showed overall income and expenditure figures for 2019 and a breakdown of how much went to each curial department.

Expense categories were listed as apostolic mission, assets management, and services and administration.

Under apostolic mission, the largest expense went to “message diffusion” at 22% and apostolic nunciatures — the Holy See’s embassies abroad — at 21%.

Supporting local churches in difficulty and mission territories accounted for 16%. Donations made up 12%, and 9% was spent on maintaining the Curia’s historic assets.

APSA had the largest expenditure at over 66 million euros toward asset management, followed by the Secretariat of State with more than 65 million in expenses, over 22 million attributed to administration costs.

The Dicastery for Communication, the department which employs the greatest number of lay people in the Holy See, spent almost 46 million euros.

[…]

Vatican City, Sep 30, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis Wednesday highlighted the life and figure of St. Jerome in an apostolic letter for the 1,600th anniversary of the Doctor of the Church’s death.

St. Jerome “emerges as a model of un… […]

Vatican City, Sep 30, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis advanced the sainthood cause Tuesday of an Italian woman who died in 1997 after touching the lives of thousands of people despite suffering from progressive paralysis.  

The pope authoriz… […]

Vatican City, Sep 30, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis called Wednesday for a new economic model to help rebuild the world after the coronavirus pandemic. 

In his general audience address in the San Damaso Courtyard, within the Vatican’… […]

Vatican City, Sep 30, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- The Council of Europe’s anti-money laundering watchdog, Moneyval, began its two-week on-site inspection of the Holy See and Vatican City Wednesday.

According to a Vatican statement Sept. 30, “t… […]

CNA Staff, Sep 29, 2020 / 02:30 pm (CNA).-  

The lawyer representing Cardinal Angelo Becciu has resigned over criticism of his social media activities.

Ivano Iai, who had been handling legal and media matters for the cardinal and his family, announced that he had withdrawn from the case after criticism of pictures he posted on social media.

Iai, apparently a recreational body-builder, posted a series of photographs of himself in revealing swimwear on different social media sites, including Instagram and Twitter. In the photos, Iai appears in seaside settings, and strikes a number of attitudes and poses, including arching backwards across a rock and sporting playfully in the surf.

The attorney’s Instagram account has now been set to private.

Iai served as attorney and spokesman for Cardinal Becciu and his family after the cardinal’s resignation last week. The lawyer confirmed to CNA Sept. 29 that he had quit the role.

“I gave up the job,” Iai said in a statement sent to CNA on Tuesday, saying he was “sorry” that his social media presence had added to the difficulties of the cardinal and his family.

“With great sorrow I communicate that I have renounced the mandate given to me by the Becciu family who honored me with their uncommon trust and affection,” Iai said.

Iai’s resignation comes, according to the lawyer, after mounting criticism and mockery online of his social media presence, including by the tabloid site Dagospia.

The lawyer told Italian news site Adnkronos that images he posted of himself were meant to be “lighthearted” and he “never ever” imagined they would create a problem for his high-profile clients.

“It saddens me to have had to be the cause of further affliction which adds to the unjust sufferings suffered in these days by His Eminence Cardinal Becciu and his family members,” Iai said in his statement to CNA. The lawyer called the Becciu family “examples of uncommon honesty and correctness – and worthy of having the best defense in a matter so very complex.”

Becciu, the former head of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, resigned on Thursday following an unscheduled meeting with Pope Francis in which the pope told the cardinal he had lost his trust and ordered him to step down. The following morning, Italian newspaper L’Espresso published a story accusing Becciu of using his positions in the curia to funnel money to members of his own family.

The cardinal’s resignation followed more than a year of reporting by CNA and other news outlets on various financial scandals involving Becciu and the Holy See’s Secretariat of State, where he served as sostituto for seven years, until he was made a cardinal and placed in charge of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in 2018.

Many of those reports stemmed from the Secretariat’s controversial investments, including the purchase of a London property for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Since October, investigators in Vatican City have conducted several raids on different Vatican departments in connection with the London property deal and connected investments. Investigators raided offices at the secretariat and the AIF, the Vatican’s financial watchdog, seizing computers and phones and resulting in the suspension of several members of staff.

After those raids, investigators also raided the home and offices of Msgr. Alberto Perlasca, who worked closely with Becciu at the Secretariat of State.

In June, Vatican authorities arrested Italian businessman Gianluigi Torzi, who helped broker the final sale of the London building.

In July, Italian police served a search and seizure warrant on Raffaele Mincione, an associate of Torzi’s, through whom the Vatican invested hundreds of millions of dollars. The warrant was issued at the request of Vatican prosecutors. Investigators took away cell phones and tablets for examination in relation to the case. Mincione has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, and earlier this year filed a lawsuit against the Secretariat of State in a U.K. court, asking a judge to rule he acted in good faith in his dealings with the Vatican.

Iai’s most recent communication on behalf of Cardinal Becciu, released Monday, announced that he had filed complaints on behalf of the Becciu family “for violation of the criminal provisions on slander and aggravated defamation and prohibition of disclosure of office and investigation secrets, [and] cases of corruptive malpractice.”

Iai said that “the illegal leakage of confidential information and documents continuously disclosed by the media in a distorted and disparaging form” had “led to the committing of further crimes and the infringement of the rights of various interested parties.”

Iai did not specify which media were the subject of his complaints, or to what authority he had submitted them.

[…]

Vatican City, Sep 29, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- A Vatican official hailed the “positive” results of the Holy See’s provisional agreement with China Tuesday amid reports that a Holy See delegation is heading to Beijing to extend the deal… […]

Vatican City, Sep 29, 2020 / 06:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis appointed the director-general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Tuesday to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. 

The Holy See press office said Sept. 29 that the po… […]

Vatican City, Sep 28, 2020 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis on Monday appointed Archbishop Charles Brown as apostolic nuncio to the Philippines, a position which had been vacant since November.

The Sept. 28 appointment transfers Archbishop Brown, a New… […]

CNA Staff, Sep 28, 2020 / 05:28 pm (CNA).-  

Italian businessman Gianluigi Torzi has provided detailed information to investigators in the ongoing Vatican financial scandal, according to new reports. News of Torzi’s cooperation with prosecu… […]