Vatican Shocks WIth Funds Misappropriation

The Vatican in engulfed in severe criticism brought by two controversial books that shed light on highly mismanaged funds, senior officials pouring Church funds into their apartments  and frozen bank accounts of the “Office” out of concerns about financial impropriety, The Guardian reported.

Gianluigi Nuzzi’s “Merchants in the Temple” is to be released on Thursday, but an advance copy has been obtained by the Associated Press. The other book, “Avarice” by journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi, is also to be released on Thursday.

According to Nuzzi’s book, one high-ranking Vatican official, Monsignor Giuseppe Sciacca, in order to improve his apartment, took upon himself to bring down a wall separating his flat from his neighbour’s. On the other hand, Avarice alleges that the Vatican’s former secretary of state, Tarcisio Bertone, used €200,000 (£142,000) from a foundation meant for supporting the Bambino Gesù paediatric hospital in Rome to renovate his own apartment.

The allegations surfaced a day following the Vatican announcement regarding the arrest of two members of a former Vatican committee – Monsignor Lucio Ángel Vallejo Balda and Francesca Chaouqui, an Italian laywoman and public relations expert, after months-long investigation into the leaking of “news and confidential documents” to two writers of forthcoming books, The Guardian said.

Independent reported that the Vatican on Monday described the books as "fruit of a grave betrayal of the trust given by the pope, and, as far as the authors go, of an operation to take advantage of a gravely illicit act of handing over confidential documentation." 

"Publications of this nature do not help in any way to establish clarity and truth, but rather generate confusion and partial and tendentious conclusions," the Vatican said.