Church in the World

Cardinal fights corruption claims

CARDINAL Crescenzio Sepe of Naples has gone on the offensive after being targeted in a wide-ranging corruption investigation into shady public works contracts and property deals involving Italian government officials.

Magistrates in the central Italian town of Perugia officially informed the cardinal over the weekend that he was being investigated for corruption after allegedly receiving kickbacks during the five years he headed the Vatican’s property-rich Congregation for Evangelisation (Propaganda Fide).

“I have done everything with utmost transparency,” the cardinal said on Monday at a high-profile press conference in Naples, the town to where Pope Benedict XVI moved him in 2006. Cardinal Sepe, 76, insisted that while he was prefect at Propaganda Fide (2001-06) the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and its Prefecture for Economic Affairs had approved all his financial dealings and even praised him for his work. “I have always acted in good conscience, my only objective being the good of the Church,” he said.

Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, on Sunday expressed “esteem and solidarity” for the cardinal. He said he hoped the incident would be “fully and rapidly clarified, so as to eliminate all shadow of doubt regarding both  xhim personally and church institutions”.

Cardinal Sepe vowed to cooperate fully with Italian magistrates, but has reportedly asked to undergo questioning at the Benedictine Abbey of Subiaco in the Province of Rome, rather than the procurator’s office in Perugia.

The cardinal is suspected of aggravated corruption with Italy’s former Minister for Infrastructure and Transportation, Pietro Lunardi. In 2004 his office sold Mr Lunardi a central Rome palazzo for well below the market price and a year later Propaganda Fide allegedly received €2.5 million (£2.1m) in public subsidies for repairs on its Piazza di Spagna headquarters that were never carried out.

Cardinal Sepe claimed the two events were unrelated and said the money Propaganda earned from the sale of the palazzo was sent to another Vatican office – the Administration for the Patrimony of the Apostolic See.

Propaganda Fide is considered one of the most powerful departments in the Vatican, especially because it owns and manages hundreds of properties in central Rome. They are worth an estimated €9 billion and bring in some €56m in rent each year. Propaganda’s prefect is commonly called “Il Papa Rosso” (“the red Pope”) because of this vast empire and also because his office – rather than the Congregation for Bishops – assists the Pope in appointing bishops for nearly 40 per cent of the Church’s 2,800-plus dioceses and ecclesiastical jurisdictions around the world.

In 2006 Pope Benedict XVI removed Cardinal Sepe from his post in Rome. In his three-page statement that the cardinal read to reporters on Monday (he took no questions), he said the Pope had told him he could remain in the Roman Curia rather than go to Naples if he wished. The cardinal also implied that the current investigation might have been planned by enemies inside the Vatican.

“I forgive from the bottom of my heart all those that – in and outside the Church – have tried to attack me,” he said.
Cardinal Sepe’s predecessor in Naples, Cardinal Michele Giordano, was also investigated for corruption. But he was acquitted in 2000 on charges that he was involved in a money-laundering ring run by his brother.