UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Jason Berry
Oct. 25, 2014
A Vatican monsignor, considered an unindicted co-conspirator by the FBI for his role in a 2008 criminal scheme to sell American church property, has been forced by Italian authorities to return valuable objects to churches in his home diocese of Turin, according to a Sep. 28 report in Il Fatto Quotidiano, a daily in Rome.
Msgr. Giovanni Carrù, an undersecretary at the Congregation for the Clergy from 2003 to 2009, is secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, a job that oversees the catacombs.
“During his 20 years as pastor in a town on the outskirts of Turin, many paintings, statues, furniture and other objects have been lost and then found in private homes,” Andrea Giambartolomei reported in Il Fatto. “Two candelabra ended up among the possessions of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, former secretary of the Vatican State.”
Bertone, whose million-dollar renovation of his apartment in the Vatican has drawn bad press, returned the questioned candelabra, according to the report in Il Fatto Quotidiano, an independently owned newspaper that, unlike many larger ones, promotes itself as receiving no government subsidy.
A special division of the Italian police charged with the protection of cultural heritage had two investigators focused on Carrù and missing religious property, Giambartolomei reported.
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