ROME
The Independent (UK)
Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst: Germany’s ‘Bishop of Bling’ in new scandal over penthouse flat in Rome
MICHAEL DAY Author Biography ROME Sunday 13 September 2015
Germany’s “Bishop of Bling”, who was removed from his post in Limburg by Pope Francis after spending extravagant amounts of church money on home improvements, including €350,000 (£257,000) on walk-in wardrobes, is now living the high life in Rome, it is claimed.
Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst was summoned to the Vatican for a dressing down in October 2013, when it emerged he’d spent €31m on renovations.
A spokesman for the Holy See then announced that the high-spending clergyman would go on a “period of leave from the diocese”.
But earlier this year it emerged that the German Bishop had been given an impressive-sounding job in Rome as “delegate for catechesis” at the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelisation.
And according to a report this weekend in a local paper, The Italian Insider, Bishop Tebartz-van Elst is enjoying suitably luxurious accommodation to go with his new job – a 200sq m penthouse close to Rome’s most famous and celebrated central square, Piazza Navona.
The apartment, with a large terrace, is only yards away from the five-star Hotel Raphael, where the notoriously corrupt former Prime Minister Bettino Craxi commandeered an entire floor before fleeing the country in disgrace in 1994.
The Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told The Independent that he did not wish to comment on Bishop Tebartz-van Elst’s new accommodation. “I don’t know anything about this. It’s nothing to do with me and I don’t wish to comment on this gossip,” he said.
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