Pope blunts powers of Vatican department over London deal

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis has blunted the powers of the Vatican department involved in a controversial London property deal and ordered all ties cut with a suspect investment fund, his spokesman said on Thursday.

The pope has ordered that the funds of the Secretariat of State, the nerve centre of the bureaucracy of the 1.3 billion-member Church, be controlled by another department, allowing three months for the changes to take place.

The pontiff created a commission on Wednesday to oversee the changes, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said, following a vast financial scandal which has already cost one high-ranking Catholic cardinal his post.

The order was made in a letter to the secretariat in August which was published in a rare move on Thursday.

Influential Italian cardinal Angelo Becciu, pushed out by the pope in September, was number two in the Secretariat of State, and linked to the purchase of a luxury building in London, which is now subject to an investigation.

Becciu stands accused of giving financier Enrico Crasso, a former Credit Suisse manager, control over millions of euros of Vatican investment funds, including from Peter’s Pence — collection money destined for the poor.

Crasso also manages an investment fund — Centurion Global Fund — with links to Swiss banks that are being investigated for money laundering scandals, according to Italy’s investigative weekly L’Espresso.