Vatican out of money? Heavens no, says Pope’s ally

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis’s economic adviser yesterday 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. — AFP