AFP
June 21, 2010
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jBq78BC6jTFRysGTWir3If9uh_2Q
NAPLES, Italy — A senior cardinal defended Monday his record at the head of a powerful Vatican body after being placed under investigation by Italian prosecutors as part of a sweeping corruption scandal.
"I did everything with maximum transparency," Crescenzio Sepe, who is also the archbishop of the southern city of Naples, told a news conference.
Prosecutors in the central town of Perugia are investigating Sepe over alleged kickbacks he accepted as the head of Propaganda Fide, the body handling the Vatican's vast real estate holdings and financing much of the Catholic Church's missionary work.
"It will be an easy defence, since it seems to me there is nothing, absolutely nothing, criminal in his behaviour," Sepe's lawyer Bruno Von Arx told reporters on Italian television, adding that prosecutors might question the cardinal this coming week.
The probe is part of a larger corruption investigation that has touched figures close to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, forcing one of his ministers to resign in May.
Sepe, who headed Propaganda Fide from 2001 to 2006, allegedly sold a building at a quarter of its market value to Italy's then infrastructure minister, Pietro Lunardi.
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| Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe gives a press conference in Naples |
Italian media have reported that in exchange for the favourable sale price Propaganda Fide obtained public subsidies worth 2.5 million euros for public works that never carried out.
The works were contracted out to Rome construction magnate Diego Anemome, one of the linchpins of the system, and who is under investigation by prosecutors over several public tenders, including infrastructure for the Group of Eight summit in Italy last year.
"I always acted following my conscience, with the good of the Church as my sole goal," Sepe said, reading from a letter addressed to the people of Naples.
He also said that the Vatican approved all of the balance sheets involved in the probe and congratulated him for his management of Propaganda Fide.
Sepe ended his statement with an oblique accusation to those implicating him in the scandal.
"I forgive, from the bottom of my heart, those that -- in and outside the Church -- wanted to hit me," he said.
Sepe, a beloved figure in Naples, headed the committee organising works for the Great Jubilee of the year 2000 before being promoted to the head of Propaganda Fide in 2001. In 2006, he left that position to head the archdiocese of Naples.
Italy's minister for economic development Claudio Scajola resigned over a similar probe into his purchase of an apartment in central Rome.
Scajola is suspected of accepting a large sum of money from Anemone towards the purchase of the apartment in July 2004.
Guido Bertolaso, the head of the Civil Protection agency and one of Silvio Berlusconi's proteges, is also under investigation for alleged irregularities in the award of reconstruction contracts in earthquake-hit L'Aquila, in central Italy and is suspected of having benefited from a Propaganda Fide apartment.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi on Sunday demanded "prompt clarification" of the probe, adding that he was "confident the situation will be clarified quickly and in full to eliminate any shadows hanging" over Sepe and Church institutions.
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