Powerful cardinal resigns amid Vatican investments scandal

Cardinal Angelo Becciu was in charge when the Vatican made loss-making purchases in London property

Angelo Becciu's resignation and renunciation of his rights as cardinal was announced in a brief Vatican statement on September 24, 2020. AP Photo

The powerful head of the Vatican's saint-making office, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, resigned from the post suddenly on Thursday and renounced his rights as a cardinal amid a financial scandal that has reportedly implicated him indirectly.

The Vatican provided no details on why Pope Francis accepted the resignation. In a one-sentence announcement, the Holy See said only that Francis had accepted the cardinal's resignation as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints “and his rights connected to the cardinalate".

Mr Becciu, the former number two in the Vatican's secretariat of state, has been reportedly implicated in a financial scandal involving the Vatican's investment in a London real estate deal that has lost the Holy See millions of euros in fees paid to middlemen.

The Vatican prosecutor has placed several Vatican officials under investigation, as well as the middlemen, but not Mr Becciu. The cardinal had defended the soundness of the original investment and denied any wrongdoing, and it was not clear whether the scandal itself was behind his resignation or possibly sparked a separate line of inquiry.

But the late-breaking news of his resignation, the severity of his apparent sanction, the Vatican’s tight-lipped release and the unexpected downfall of one of the most powerful Vatican officials all suggested a shocking new chapter in the scandal, which has convulsed the Vatican for the past year.

The last time a cardinal’s rights were removed was when American Theodore McCarrick renounced his rights and privileges as a cardinal in July 2018 amid a sexual abuse investigation. He was defrocked by Pope Francis last year for sexually abusing adults as well as minors.

Before him, the late Scottish cardinal Keith O’Brien in 2015 relinquished the rights and privileges of his office after unidentified priests alleged sexual misconduct. O’Brien was, however, allowed to retain the cardinal’s title and he died a member of the College of Cardinals, the elite group of churchmen whose main job is to elect a pope.

In the Vatican statement, the Holy See identified Mr Becciu as “His Eminence Cardinal Angelo Becciu”, making clear he remained a cardinal but without any rights, including the right to take part in the election of a pope.

At 72, Mr Becciu would have been able to participate in a possible future conclave to elect the Francis's successor. Cardinals over the age of 80 cannot vote.

Mr Becciu was the “substitute”, or top deputy in the secretariat of state, from 2011 until 2018, when Francis made him a cardinal and moved him into the Vatican’s saint-making office. He straddled two pontificates, having been named by Pope Benedict XVI and entrusted with essentially running the Curia, or Vatican bureaucracy, a position that gave him enormous influence and power.

The financial problems date from 2014, a year after Benedict stepped down, when the Vatican entered into a real estate venture by investing over $200 million in a fund run by an Italian businessman. The deal gave the Holy See 45 per cent of the luxury building at 60 Sloane Avenue in London’s Chelsea neighbourhood.

The money came from the secretariat of state’s asset portfolio, which is funded in large part by donations to the Holy See from Catholics around the world for the pope to use for charity and Vatican expenses.

The Holy See decided in November 2018, after Mr Becciu had left the secretariat of state, to exit the fund, end its relationship with the businessman and buy out the remainder of the building. It did so after Mr Becciu's successor determined that the mortgage was too onerous and that the businessman was losing money for the Vatican in some of the fund’s other investments.

The buyout deal, however, cost the Holy See tens of millions of euros more and sparked the Vatican investigation that has so far implicated a half-dozen employees.

Mr Becciu has insisted he was not in power during the 2018 buyout deal and always acted in the interests of the Holy See. He was not named in the Vatican prosecutor's initial warrant and it remains unclear if his role in managing the secretariat of state's vast asset portfolio was connected with the resignation.

His former boss, Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, has said the whole matter was “opaque" and needed to be clarified. Pope Francis, for his part, has vowed to get to the bottom of what he has said was evidence of corruption in the Holy See.

Francis would meet regularly with Mr Becciu in the Italian's role as prefect of the saint-making office, since every month or two he would present lists of candidates for possible beatification or canonisation for the pope to approve.