VATICAN CITY
Gazzetta del Sud
Rome, April 28 – Former Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone strongly denied Monday Italian media reports claiming that the prelate will move into an “opulent” flat measuring as much as 700 square meters in the Vatican while Pope Francis makes do with humbler lodgings. “In recent days some media outlets have spoken malevolently about the apartment where I will live in the Vatican and, to worsen the public humiliation, their ‘informant’ has doubled the square meters,” Bertone said in a letter to two diocesan newspapers. “It has been said, among other things, that the pope was furious with me for so much opulence. The size of ‘my’ apartment has even been compared to the presumed restricted nature of the residence of the pope,” he added in the letter to the diocesan weeklies of Genoa and Vercelli. Since his election last year, in a move criticised by some conservative Catholics, Francis has decided not to move into the vast papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace used by his predecessors, choosing instead to remain in a suite in the Santa Marta guesthouse used by cardinals during the papal Conclave.
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