{"id":1410905,"date":"2022-03-30T16:45:19","date_gmt":"2022-03-30T20:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1410905"},"modified":"2022-03-30T16:45:28","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T20:45:28","slug":"pope-approved-payment-for-vatican-to-exit-botched-deal-court-told","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/pope-approved-payment-for-vatican-to-exit-botched-deal-court-told\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope approved payment for Vatican to exit botched deal, court told"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fpope-approved-payment-for-vatican-to-exit-botched-deal-court-told%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1410905&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/2022-03-30T193313Z_1_LYNXNPEI2T162_RTROPTP_0_VATICAN-TRIAL_1.jpg\" alt=\"FILE PHOTO: Vatican begins trial for 10 people including prominent cardinal after financial scandal\" \/><br \/>FILE PHOTO: Trial begins at the Vatican for 10 people, including prominent Italian cardinal Angelo Becciu, who are charged with financial crimes including embezzlement, money laundering, fraud, extortion and abuse of office, at the Vatican, July 27, 2021. Vatican Media\/Handout via REUTERS<\/div>\n<p>March 30, 2022<\/p>\n<p>By Philip Pullella<\/p>\n<p>VATICAN CITY (Reuters) \u2013     A defendant at a Vatican trial testified on Wednesday that superiors including Pope Francis approved a $15 million settlement to get the Vatican out of a botched London real estate deal to avoid a total loss.<\/p>\n<p>Testifying for more than four hours, Monsignor Mauro Carlino described the final phases of the venture, which began when the Vatican\u2019s Secretariat of State invested 350 million euros ($390 million) in 2014 with Italian broker Raffaele Mincione to buy a luxury building in London.<\/p>\n<p>In 2018, the Vatican felt it was being fleeced by Mincione, according to the indictment document, and turned to another broker, Gianluigi Torzi, to get out of the first deal. <\/p>\n<p>But Vatican prosecutors accuse Torzi of duping the Vatican and trying to take control of the building by assigning himself the voting shares. The Vatican then sought an exit deal with Torzi.<\/p>\n<p>Carlino testified that in May 2019, he and other Vatican negotiators agreed to give Torzi 15 million euros to allow it to leave the venture.<\/p>\n<p>Torzi, Mincione, Carlino, and another seven defendants, who include former Vatican officials and employees, have denied all wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI never moved a finger without authorization from my superiors,\u201d said Carlino, who is accused of extortion and abuse of office.<\/p>\n<p>He said his boss, deputy secretary of state Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra, \u201cconstantly informed the secretary of state (Cardinal Pietro Parolin) and the Holy Father\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Carlino said the pope wanted the Vatican to get out of the mess but by \u201cspending as little as possible\u201d so that the investment would not be a total loss. Prosecutors at the trial, which began in July, said the Vatican lost 217 million euros, some of it from funds that had been donated by the faithful.<\/p>\n<p>Carlino testified that Pena Parra told him that the pope was \u201chappy that we were finally ending this\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The court was also told that the pope had lifted \u201cpontifical secrecy\u201d so that Cardinal Angelo Becciu could answer questions about a woman in his employ who did undercover intelligence work in 2018-2019.<\/p>\n<p>Cecilia Marogna, 42, is charged with embezzlement. A self-styled secret agent, she has said she used all of a 575,000-euro stipend of Vatican money to ransom kidnapped missionaries in Africa. She has denied charges that she used some of the money to buy luxury goods.<\/p>\n<p>The trial was adjourned until April 5.<\/p>\n<p>($1 = 0.8961 euros)<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Philip Pullella, Editing by Rosalba O\u2019Brien)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FILE PHOTO: Trial begins at the Vatican for 10 people, including prominent Italian cardinal Angelo Becciu, who are charged with financial crimes including embezzlement, money laundering, fraud, extortion and abuse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1410905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1410905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1410905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1410905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1410905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}