VATICAN CITY
Huffington Post
By Andrea Purgatori
VATICAN CITY — “That there is the Casa di Santa Marta, where Pope Francis lives. That down there is the monastery where Pope Ratzinger retired. And this right here is the Terrace of Scandals.”
I am strolling on the roof of the Palazzo San Carlo with the man who for eight years was the most powerful person in the Vatican after the pope: Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s former secretary of state. For decades, he’s been one of the church’s most powerful officials — and he’s been suspected of playing a central role in some of the Curia’s most mysterious intrigues, including last year’s allegations that he mishandled millions of dollars through the Vatican Bank.
Sunlight gleams off the towering cupola of St. Peter’s, that Roman sunlight which already portends the arrival of spring. This terrace has for months been presumed to be part of Bertone’s lavish — and widely criticized — retirement complex: a 2500-square-foot luxury apartment with a view of the city. But the terrace is shared, and the supposed extravagance of the balcony can in fact be enjoyed by everybody in the building, without giving direct access to Bertone’s apartment. He gives a sly smile.
“A certain cardinal told me this would be a magnificent place to relax and meditate. But it was not up to me to decide,” he says. “Despite what has been written and said, it does not belong to me; it is for the use of all the building’s residents.”
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