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VATICAN-RELIGION-POPE-FINANCE
The Vatican out of money? Heavens no, says pope ally
VATICAN CITY, Oct 22, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Pope Francis’s economic adviser
on Tuesday denied reports the Vatican was at risk of default, saying the
allegations were part of a campaign to discredit the pontiff.
“To say that the Vatican is at danger of default is false,” said
Honduran Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga, who heads a group of six cardinals that
advise Francis on economic reforms within the Catholic Church’s governing
body.
“It seems to me there is a discrediting strategy underway,” he said in
an interview with the Repubblica newspaper.
Maradiaga was reacting to allegations in a book by Italian journalist
Gianluigi Nuzzi, who claims to have seen internal documents that show the
Vatican’s finances are in a dire state and the institution is “at risk of
default”.
“They want to undermine the pontificate: first by depicting a Church
made up mainly of paedophiles, and now by showing economic negligence. But
it’s not true,” Maradiaga said.
Nuzzi has made a name for himself by publishing a series of books on
Vatican financial scandals. In his latest, published Monday, he analyses the
Vatican’s books for 2018, showing them to be in the red and getting worse.
The book says APSA, a department of the Holy See which oversees real
estate and investments, had a deficit of nearly 44 million euros ($49
million) in 2018, compared to 32 million the previous year.
Nuzzi said the real estate portfolio was worth an estimated 2.7 billion
euros and was badly managed.
Some 800 properties were lying empty, he said, while 15 percent of the
3,200 rented properties were being let for free, and others were being rented
out below market prices.
An internal report by the pope’s advisors, quoted in the book, warns
that the Vatican “deficit is recurrent and structural, and has reached
worrying levels, with a risk of default if urgent action is not taken”.
APSA head Bishop Nunzio Galantino also rebuffed the book’s findings.
“There is neither backruptcy nor default”, just a need for a savings
plan “to contain expenses”, he told the Avvenire daily.
BSS/AFP/BZC/1850HRS