Vatican City, Nov 3, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Catholics in Rome marked the 70th anniversary of the proclamation of the dogma of the Assumption Sunday with a solemn Mass offered by Cardinal Mauro Piacenza.
Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption of the Vir… […]
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 2, 2020 / 08:00 pm (CNA).-
The Vatican Secretariat of State’s holding company, through which it controls a London property at 60 Sloane Avenue, has only one registered director, an Italian-British architect.
As the London property remains in the headlines, it is not clear how he was appointed to that role, but the architect has business connections to Gianluigi Torzi, who acted as a broker in the Holy See’s purchase of the property.
The purchase of the London building is at the center of unfolding financial scandals surrounding the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. It was purchased over a period of years from the Vatican’s investment manager Raffaele Mincione for a reported 350 million pounds; Torzi brokered the final stage of the sale.
The building is now controlled by the secretariat through a U.K. registered company, London 60 SA Ltd.
Since November 2019, the company has had only one listed director: Luciano Capaldo, an architect and property developer with connections to businesses linked to Torzi.
Four directors have been appointed to the London 60 Sa Ltd since it was registered in early 2019; three were removed between August and November 2019. Two of those removed are former staff members at the Vatican secretariat, who were removed from their posts after raids at the secretariat in October, 2019.
In June, Vatican prosecutors arrested Torzi, who has been charged with extortion, self-laundering, aggravated fraud, and embezzlement.
Although Torzi was meant to be acting on behalf of the Vatican’s interests in its dealing with Mincione, CNA has reported on the potential conflicts of interest in the deal:
That Mincione owed millions of euros to one of Torzi’s companies at the time of the transaction. And that Mincione had invested 10 million euros of Vatican funds in Sierra One, a bond of securitized debt, including some debt from mafia-linked companies, which was packaged and sold by Sunset Enterprise Ltd., a company controlled at that time by Torzi.
Sierra One’s administrator was Giacomo Capizzi, a business associate of Torzi. Capizzi is the CEO of Meti Capital, a company of which Capaldo owns personally almost 3%, and in which Torzi’s company, Sunset Enterprises, is also a shareholder.
Capizzi is also CEO of Imvest, a property development company listed in Rome. Imvest’s largest shareholder is Meti Capital.
Luciano Capaldo was chairman of Imvest from 2017 to 2018. He stepped down for “personal and family reasons,” on Nov. 26, 2018, during the same week the Vatican finalized its purchase of the London property.
Another stakeholder in Imvest is FEG International Assets SA, an anonymously incorporated company in Luxembourg that, in 2016, was run by Torzi.
In 2019, FEG and Torzi were named in a commercial fraud suit in London’s High Court. Also named as respondent was Torzi’s former company Odikon Services PLC, a company of which Capaldo was secretary from May to November 2018, and an investor in Meti as of December 2017.
Capaldo stepped down as the secretary of Odikon in November 2018, the same month he ceased being chairman of Imvest and the Vatican’s London property deal was finalized by Torzi.
Capaldo’s attorneys have said that the businessman has no knowledge of the lawsuit against Odikon.
Torzi, and his companies Odikon Services and Sunset Enterprise, are currently being investigated by Italian authorities for an alleged multi-million euro fraud involving securitization of debt owed to Fatebenefratelli, a Catholic hospital in Rome. The alleged fraud dates back to 2018, when Capaldo was secretary of Odikon.
The Fatebenefratelli debt was at one point part of the Sierra One bond, in which Mincione invested Vatican money in June 2018.
Capaldo has also served as a director of two other companies at which Gianluigi Torzi was a director, or in which Torzi and his companies had a financial interest: Sunset Credit Yield Ltd. and Virtualbricks Ltd.
The Vatican has not explained how the businessman was chosen by the Secretariat of State to serve as a director of London 60 SA, or why he is now the sole remaining director of the company. Nor has Capaldo responded to questions CNA sent to his attorney regarding his relationship with Torzi.
Vatican City, Nov 2, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis visited a cemetery in Vatican City to pray on All Souls’ Day Monday and offered Mass for the faithful departed.
“‘Hope does not disappoint,’ St. Paul tells us. Hope attr… […]
Vatican City, Nov 1, 2020 / 07:45 am (CNA).- On the Solemnity of All Saints, Pope Francis encouraged everyone to follow the model of the saints, who pursued virtue in contradiction to the ways of the world and thus give witness to Christian hope.
&ldq… […]
Vatican City, Nov 1, 2020 / 06:38 am (CNA).- Pope Francis on Sunday named Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi his special delegate to the Order of Malta, following the resignation of Cardinal Angelo Becciu.
In a pontifical letter Nov. 1, Pope Francis said he had accepted the resignation of Becciu as delegate and appointed Tomasi in his place.
Tomasi, 80, will be elevated to cardinal at a consistory on Nov. 28. In 2016, he retired after 13 years as permanent observer to the United Nations Office and Specialized Agencies in Geneva.
Cardinal Becciu had been the pope’s delegate to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta since February 2017, when he was appointed to oversee the nearly one-thousand-year-old order’s “spiritual and moral” renewal as it navigated a period of internal reform.
On Sept. 24, Pope Francis asked Becciu to resign as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and from the rights of cardinals, following reports alleging he had used millions of euros of Vatican charity funds in speculative and risky investments.
As special delagate to the Order of Malta, Tomasi will collaborate with the order’s new Grand Master, who will be chosen in an election in Rome on Nov. 7.
Tomasi’s appointment comes at a crucial time for the historic order, which has been in a slow-moving constitutional crisis since Pope Francis compelled the resignation of a previous Grand Master, Fra’ Matthew Festing in 2017.
That decision came after Festing himself had compelled the resignation of Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager Boeselager in 2016, after it became known that an aid project of the order in Myanmar had distributed thousands of condoms. Boselager insisted that he had not known about the distribution of condoms, and that he had put a stop to it as soon as he became aware.
In 2017, Boeselager was reinstated as Grand Chancellor, and Becciu was appointed as the pope’s personal delegate to oversee the order’s reform, effectively supplanting the role of the order’s Cardinal Patron, Cardinal Raymond Burke, who remains in post only nominally.
Becciu was to work with Fra’ Giacomo Dalla Torre, who was elected to succeed Festing, first on an interim basis and later permanently, as the order moved towards a revision of its governing code and constitution, including a revision of the roles and rights of its three levels of knights from around the world. Dalla Torre died in May.
On Nov. 7, the professed knights of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta will hold a Council Complete of State, a gathering of representatives from across the order’s provinces and ranks, at which they will elect a new Grand Master.
Boeselager told CNA last month that the “the papal delegate is not part of the structure of the order. He is a representative of the Holy Father, but he is not involved directly in the governance or work of the order.”
Pope Francis said in his Nov. 1 letter to Tomasi that he will “enjoy all the powers necessary to decide any questions that may arise for the implementation of the mandate entrusted to you, to receive the oath of the next Grand Master, and you will be my exclusive spokesperson for all that pertains to relations between this Apostolic See and the Order.”
An Italian, Tomasi was ordained a priest in 1965 as a member of the Congregation of the Missionaries of Saint Charles Borromeo.
He earned a PhD in sociology from Fordham University in New York City. In the 1970s and ’80s he taught sociology in New York and co-founded the Center for Migration Studies.
In 1989, Pope John Paul II named him secretary of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples.
He later served as a Vatican diplomat, with posts as apostolic nuncio in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti, before being appointed permanent observer.
Vatican City, Oct 31, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).-
A group of European academics have begun to carry out limited new research on the ministry of Catholic exorcists, with the hope to expand the scope of their study in the future.
One member of the r… […]
Rome Newsroom, Oct 30, 2020 / 12:30 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis has said more changes are on the horizon as the Vatican continues to combat financial corruption inside its walls, but he is cautious about success.
Speaking to Italian news agency AdnKronos … […]
Rome Newsroom, Oct 30, 2020 / 07:18 am (CNA).- An Italian woman under investigation by Vatican authorities for suspected embezzlement was released from a jail in Milan on Friday, as she awaits a decision on the Vatican’s extradition request.
A M… […]
Vatican City, Oct 29, 2020 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- After nine weeks of public general audiences, Pope Francis’ weekly gathering will again take place behind closed doors, the Vatican said Thursday.
The decision to move back to a livestream-only forma… […]
Rome Newsroom, Oct 29, 2020 / 08:30 am (CNA).- The college for American seminarians in Rome is quarantining as a campus after several students tested positive for the coronavirus this week.
A spokesman for the Pontifical North American College told CNA that the seminary had “some students test positive,” and that those students are being isolated while other students and faculty are quarantining on the Rome campus.
Vice Rector Fr. David A. Schunk said the seminary is “increasing our testing,” following the positive results.
Rome’s Pontifical Universities, which have students from around the world, resumed in-person in early October.
After ending the 2019-2020 academic year with online classes during Italy’s national lockdown, the Vatican-accredited schools were directed in June to prepare to teach in person with added health and safety measures.
Pontifical universities continue to offer some online learning as needed, especially for those who were not able to return to Rome or must quarantine. Some universities have had students test positive for the coronavirus as cases in Rome and across Italy continue to rise.
Students arriving at the North American College from the United States in August and September were required to take COVID-19 tests and observe a travel quarantine for 14 days at the seminary’s campus on the Janiculum Hill, not far from the Vatican.
After the travel quarantine ended for the 33 new students, called “New Men,” in early September, they were able to attend Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica and make a pilgrimage to Assisi for two days.
They also had the chance to meet Pope Francis in the Clementine Hall of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on Sept 6.
In the meeting, Fr. Peter Harman, rector of the seminary, assured the pope of their continued prayers. “We have just returned from pilgrimage to Assisi, and there we begged the intercession of St. Francis for Pope Francis,” he said.
“Please pray for us, that this new year will be one of grace, health and growth always in God’s will,” the rector asked Francis.
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