The Vatican launches its real estate heritage | At the gates of a corruption trial

According to a report released this weekend by the Heritage Administration of the Holy See (APSA), an agency that manages the assets of the Holy See around the world, the Vatican has recognized the ownership of 4,951 properties in Italy and 1,120 in other countries, without including in this inventory the Vatican embassies in the world. Most of the properties outside of Italy are located in France, UK and Switzerland.

The information is part of the consolidated balance sheet of the Holy See for the year 2020, published on July 24, which reports on a deficit of 66.3 million euros attributed, among other things, to the covid-19 pandemic.

The Vatican inventory includes properties in the luxury districts of London, Geneva, Lausanne and Paris that the Holy See justifies as a form of investment to finance the functioning of the Church.

APSA’s review was released days before it debuted at the Vatican itself on July 27. a trial involving ten people, including Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu, for crimes such as embezzlement, money laundering, fraud, extortion and abuse of office and linked to the purchase of a building in the elegant London borough of South Kensington, acquired in 2014 by the Secretary of State of the Holy See and which, according to preliminary investigations, generated significant losses for the pontifical heritage.

As the Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi published in his book “Universal Judgment”, the Holy See has assets totaling 2,700 million euros worldwide.

In una entrevista concedida to Vatican News, Nunzio Galantino, Presidente of APSA, explained that “the decision to publicar el documento” that pone en blanco sobre negro las propiedades vaticanas hace con la “esperanza” that the confianza in the labor of the church. “It is a step forward in terms of transparency,” said the Italian bishop.

In Italy, APSA rents around 2,400 apartments and 600 shops and offices. In total, it is around 1.6 million square meters, of which 15% are offered openly on the real estate market and 30% are rentals offered at subsidized prices to employees and retirees. The remaining 55% is occupied by the Vatican or educational institutions. Throughout 2020, rents in Italy brought in 2.8 million euros and in the rest of the world an additional 13.8 million.

In an interview with AFP, Galantino said that “the statement made saying that” most of the buildings in Rome belong to the Church and the Vatican is “false”.

In Paris, the Church owns 737 real estate properties (approximately 56,000 square meters), located in key districts of the French capital and valued at 595.5 million euros (721.6 million dollars). 27 other properties (4,600 square meters) are valued at 108.5 million euros ($ 131.4 million).

According to what Bishop Galantino said, the deficit of 66.3 million euros “was much better than expected in the revised budget” in March due to the pandemic, which was 82 million euros. “The activities that all of APSA are launching go beyond the grave consequences of the pandemic crisis,” the bishop told Vatican News. “Our energies are directed towards a credible and reliable administration, as well as efficient and efficient, allowing us to be guided by processes of rationalization, transparency and professionalism also required by Pope Francis”, he added. .

However, Galantino does not assess the total assets of Church buildings in Italy and the rest of the world, and existing records in the Vatican administration are not consistent by all estimates. Curiously, Saint Peter’s Basilica, mother temple of the Church in the world, is symbolically valued at one euro.

Other estimates place the assets of the Holy See at several billion dollars, a figure difficult to document in the documents.