BOMBSHELL: Parolin Reportedly Signed Final Document Approving Purchase Of Property At Center Of Peter’s Pence Scandal

A few hours before the start of the Conclave, while the debate revolves around poisons and alleged conspiracies, new documents emerge that shed more and more light on the affair of the London palace, which culminated in the great scandal of Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who retired a few days ago. The latest document circulating in the Vatican, and which Il Tempo publishes exclusively, bears the signature of the Secretary of State Parolin, favored among the papabili of the Conclave that is about to open. A signature at the bottom of the memorandum, dated November 25, 2018, which describes in detail the financial and patrimonial operation that the Vatican had so far denied knowing in detail, attributing the responsibility to individuals. Under the memorandum, Parolin writes in his own hand a comment that, instead, would seem to confirm that the Holy See was not only informed of the Sloane Avenue affair, but that the Secretariat of State, in its highest position represented by Parolin, had personally authorized the operation. “Having received assurances on the solidity of the operation (which would bring advantages to the Holy See), its transparency and the absence of reputational risks (which, indeed, exceed those linked to the management of the Gof Fund),” Parolin writes, “I am in favor of signing the contracts.”

The document, which the Secretary of State signed, describes the various steps of the acquisition of the Sloane Avenue property, born at the suggestion of Credit Suisse in London, which then brought Becciu into the storm. A document that in 2018 was endorsed by Parolin. So much so that at the bottom of the memorandum, which outlines the exit from the Palace Fund (which ultimately cost the Vatican 40 million euros and which, in recent days, led the English High Court to order the Holy See to pay 4 million euros in legal costs to Raffaele Mincione, owner of the property), there is the handwritten note by Parolin, with which he authorizes the operation and the stipulation of the contracts, which would have led to the purchase of the palace through the Luxembourg company Gutt.Sa, owned by the broker Gianluigi Torzi. A decision that Parolin would have taken, as he himself writes, after having heard, the evening before, the opinion of Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, the great accuser of Becciu, and that of Fabrizio Tirabassi, the one head and the other minute-taker of the Administrative Office of the Secretariat of State.

This formal green light from the Holy See had never been discussed in this entire scandal. It had always been believed that the initiative had been taken by individuals, without formal approval, to the point that Becciu paid a high price in the trial of the century, which ended in the first instance with the cardinal being sentenced to five years and six months in prison for embezzlement and aggravated fraud, even though the trial showed that the cardinal did not pocket a single cent. This document, contained in the trial file but never leaked, is found on page 97 of the attachment called “All 15 Annotation by PG Squillace with attachments”, which is part of the second folder of documents filed by the office of the promoter of justice, Alessandro Diddi, on August 20, 2021. A memorandum that would show another version of the story of that great scandal on the extra-budgetary funds of Peter’s Pence, which were intended for the poor and instead were used to do business. And now these new revelations could reopen the Becciu question, which seemed closed after the controversial letters from Pope Francis, which excluded the cardinal from the Conclave, and with the cardinal’s resignation, formalized in recent days.

Translated and republished from Il Tempo