Tegola on Conclave: Curia will have to pay 4 million for London scandal

On the imminent Conclave, whichnext week will have to choose the successor of Pope Francis, a financial tile falls, aggravating the already precarious situation of the Vatican's accounts. While the Holy See is in the midst of uncertainty, without a guide, and at the most delicate juncture, that of the appointment of a new Pope, from London comes an order to pay about £4 million to the financier Raffaele Mincione. There is always the old scandal of the Sloane Avenue building, a real estate investment that created a hundreds of millions hole and a heavy damage to the image of the Vatican State.

Judge Knowles ordered the Vatican topay 50% of the total legal costs, amounting to almost£7 million, incurred by Mincione and his regulated investment fund WRM Group, after they were forced to defend themselves against false accusations of dishonesty, fraud and conspiracy made by senior Catholic Church officials. Last year, Mincione had dragged the Vatican to court in London, in the first legal case brought against the small Catholic sovereign state in the Church's thousand-year history.

In an order that confirmed a semi-victory for Mincione and WRM after years of bitter litigation, the judge ordered the Vatican to make animmediate payment of £1.5 million within weeks, with further payments to be made following a detailed assessment. Before the faithful and the gospel of Christ, the new pontiff will have to deal with much more mundane and pressing matters.

The historic trial had focused on the Church's purchase of a former Harrods warehouse in Chelsea, central London, for £275 million in 2018. Mincione had sold the property to the Vatican through a company commissioned by the Vatican and at its request. Senior Church officials later claimed that they had been duped into paying an amount in excess of the market value.

Prior to the London ruling, Mincione had been tried in the Vatican for allegedly defrauding the Church in connection with the sale. He was acquitted of all fraud charges relating to the Vatican's exit from the investment in 2018, but was found guilty of embezzlement for violating an old canonical rule relating to the administration of ecclesiastical property and bribery. Mincione has appealed against these convictions. Prior to the start of the Vatican trial, the Italian financier, who is also famous for marrying the model Heather Mills who later became the wife of Paul McCartney and for owning the Badrutt Hotel in St. Moritz, had filed a lawsuit in the English courts seeking judicial declarations on the validity of the sale transaction and the Vatican's liability in that transaction. Judge Knowles examined the transaction in detail during a three-week trial last year, in which Monsignor Edgar Peña Parra, the third highest ranking member of the Catholic Church, testified under oath.