George Pell nemesis Angelo Becciu quits over Vatican money scandals

Angelo Becciu, the Italian cardinal whose office was embroiled in multiple financial scandals has resigned suddenly.

Giovanni Angelo Becciu in his elevation to cardinal in June 2018. Picture: AFP

Angelo Becciu, the Italian cardinal whose office was embroiled in multiple financial scandals, has resigned suddenly and renounced his rights as a cardinal.

The extraordinary move was announced without any explanation in a terse Vatican statement on Thursday night.

Cardinal Becciu, 72, was in charge of the Congregation for Saints and should have been entitled to vote in papal conclaves until the age of 80. But until June 2018, as the second highest official in the Secretariat of State, he was the arch opponent of the efforts by Australian cardinal George Pell to reform the Vatican’s corrupt, sclerotic and opaque finances.

Vatican police raided the offices of the powerful Secretariat last October. They were investigating a dubious investment of several hundred thousand euros by the Vatican in real estate in London’s upmarket Chelsea. The deal reportedly cost the Vatican millions of euros in payments to middlemen.

The Vatican prosecutor’s ­investigation was reportedly prompted by an objection from the Vatican Bank to the Secretariat’s request for a loan to fund the purchase. In June, Vatican prosecutors charged an Italian businessman with counts of extortion, embezzlement, fraud and money laundering, carrying a potential jail sentence of up to 12 years in connection with the deal.

Cardinal Becciu, who appears likely to retain his title, has not been accused directly of wrongdoing in the matter.

Cardinal George Pell in Melbourne in 2018. Picture: AFP

On hearing of the resignation on Friday morning, Australian time, Cardinal Pell told The Weekend Australian: “The Holy Father was elected to clean up Vatican finances. He plays a long game and is to be congratulated on recent developments. I hope the clean-ups of the Augean stables continue, both in the Vatican and in Victoria’.’

In 2016 and 2017, the then-archbishop Becciu led the “old guard’s’’ opposition to the financial clean-up, thwarting the reform process at every turn. In 2016, The Australian reported that he announced the suspension of an audit of Vatican finances by PricewaterhouseCoopers. He had also instructed staff they did not have to ­provide documentation to the auditors. The church then appointed Libero Milone, a former chairman and chief executive of Deloitte in Italy, as Vatican auditor. But in September 2017, archbishop Becciu was involved in a public slanging match with Mr Milone, who had been sacked a few months earlier.

At a press conference at his lawyer’s office in Rome, Mr Milone said he was forced to step down as a result of trumped-up accusations of spying after he discovered evidence of possible illegal activity. He also said the “old guard” in the Vatican wanted to slow down the Pope’s reform efforts. Archbishop Becciu hit back, stating Mr Milone “was spying on the private lives of his superiors and staff, including me” and “if he had not agreed to resign, we would have prosecuted him”. Mr Milone, had no need to spy. Investigating finances and officials was his job.

Last November, Cardinal Becciu lashed out on Twitter at articles by members of the Vatican press corps about the London property speculation “claiming my involvement in financial impropriety ‘discovered’ by Cardinal Pell. I am shocked by such a way of convincing readers!’’

As The Australian reported, Cardinal Becciu also defended the diversion of “Peter’s Pence’’ donations by Catholics around the world for the Pope to use for charity into property investment. The manner of Cardinal Becciu’s public disgrace is extremely rare. In 2018, Theodore McCarrick, a former archbishop of Washington and a prime mover in the Vatican’s controversial deal with the Chinese Communist Party, resigned from the College of Cardinals after a church investigation found claims he had sexually abused a minor in the 1970s were credible. The next year, after a Vatican trial found him guilty of sexual abuse and misconduct, he was defrocked from the priesthood.

In 2015, the late Scottish cardinal Keith O’Brien renounced the rights and privileges of cardinal — including the right to vote in conclaves — but retained his title after an investigation into allegations that he had sexually harassed adult seminarians in the 1980s.