ROME
The Daily Beast

BARBIE LATZA NADEAU
07.16.17

ROME—Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state under Pope Benedict XVI, is an old-school kind of cleric whose lavish lifestyle has no place in the modest Catholic Church of Pope Francis. He was an early target of the incoming pope’s housecleaning, among the first to be kicked out and replaced by more frugal fathers. Since then, he remains a sort of poster-priest for the decadence and splendor the Vatican’s princes used to get away with.

Now the lavish 2,400-square-foot penthouse apartment he lovingly refurbished with such amenities as luxury white Carrara marble and a $6,000 security door, is the object of a criminal trial that will open at the Vatican’s tribunal next Tuesday. In the dock are two former executives of the Vatican’s Bambino Gesu children’s hospital who will face charges for using “money belonging to the Bambino Gesu…