Vatican properties ‘being used as brothels’

VATICAN CITY: Vatican-owned properties in Rome are operating as seedy saunas and massage parlours where priests pay for sex, according to the latest in a series of leaked reports.

It is also claimed that Vatican officials are allowing buildings to be rented out as favours to powerful colleagues and turning a blind eye to shady property deals, as well as allowing addresses to be used as red-light establishments.

Among the properties mentioned in the document, made public by a Vatican mole, are premises in two streets close to the Italian parliament and a solarium near Piazza Barberini, according to press reports.

One Vatican department, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, has been highlighted. It owns hundreds of high-value properties in Rome, worth hundreds of millions of euros.

Two years ago it emerged that the Vatican had purchased a £16 million (R345m) share of a Rome apartment block, which housed the Europa Multiclub, Europe’s biggest gay sauna.

Tales of visiting priests were legion, and a section of the sauna’s website promoting special “bear nights” included a video of a hirsute man stripping down and changing into a priest’s outfit.

Meanwhile, sources said Pope Francis hoped to close the leak investigation and draw a line under the affair before the Vatican’s Jubilee Year, which begins on December 8. Some observers believe the leaks are part of a campaign to undermine his reform efforts. – The Independent