Merchants in the Temple (16 page)

This no-rent apartment was reported to the COSEA Commission by the President of APSA, Cardinal Calcagno, the scheming prelate and wily connoisseur of the Curia's secrets. On September 30, 2013, Calcagno forwarded to the chairman of the Commission his thoughts on the matter in the file Zahra.doc. The document was unsigned and written on plain paper. The first part appeared to be a report on APSA's difficulties in managing the properties of the Holy See. The document describes a chaotic situation bordering on anarchy, and throws in an occasional cutting remark:

The administrative situation of the Holy See, at least from the point of view of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic Seat (APSA) is characterized by more than a few gray areas that, in recent decades, have grown steadily darker rather than dissipating.

Notice must unfortunately be taken of the administrative presumption of certain Vatican realities that consider themselves somehow preempted from the need for managerial oversight and possible observations on the criteria for expenditures and expected compliance with the annual budget. The first situations to come to mind are those of the Prefecture of the Pontifical House and the Office of Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff: in both cases it is not uncommon to be told, however elegantly, that observations cannot be expressed on them since they are realities that must take care of the person of the Holy Father. Various Vatican offices do not look kindly upon any corrections or criticisms that APSA might present in the face of requests, or expenditures already undertaken, made in the spirit of luxury and with a lack of moderation.

In addition to the increase in Entities and Foundations there has also been an expansion of the administrative office of the Secretariat of State, which rather than limit itself to the possibly delicate affairs that the Holy Father wishes to reserve for it, manages and administers a considerable sum of money, whose provenance and management criteria no one knows or can say, not even the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See.
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Near the end of Calcagno's report, an interjection appears—a few words laced with venom—referring to a single case: the only specific case mentioned in the whole report. It is the story of a home that was supposedly granted in accordance with the express wishes of Ratzinger:

Along these lines, there is no lack of exceptional personal cases that nevertheless place a burden on the finances of APSA, arranged for
pro Gratia
by the Supreme Authorities: just to mention one, there is the case of Professor Guzmán Carriquiry, to whom the Holy Father Benedict XVI granted, for himself and his spouse, the arrangement free-of-charge of an apartment for the duration of his natural life.

Calcagno is one of the cardinals of the old guard, and he seemed to be out of step with the new era. His relations with Francis were formal from the start. These lines from his report could be interpreted, without malice, as the classical curial knife between the ribs. The men who had led the Curia for years, exercising uncontested power, were feeling the pressure of Francis and his minute inspection of the books of their dicasteries. There had been plenty of infighting during the pontificate of Benedict XVI, but either he was not informed of it or he refused to intervene. A scholar, lover of classical music, and subtle expert on Church doctrine, rather than call for investigations he limited himself to condemning “the human ambition to power” so frequently cited in his sermons.

With the arrival of Francis, the cardinals were in culture shock. The international auditors championed his message in their meetings. And the growing reaction of the Curia, as this book documents, is potentially explosive. Calcagno, for example, was now reporting to the Commission preferential treatment that had been granted to a friend of the Pope, the lawyer Guzmán Carriquiry, as if to say, “if you want skeletons in the closet, I'll show you where to look.”

For his part, Guzmán had no trouble explaining the apartment to anyone who might ask. It was a benefit granted to him to round off his salary. In the past years he had entertained various job offers with much higher pay than he received from the Holy See. Faced by the possibility that he might leave, the Vatican evidently gave him the apartment as compensation for his lower earnings.

Calcagno was feeling the pressure, and he realized that the investigation into the real estate holdings could also cast suspicion on perfectly legitimate interests and property dear to his heart, starting with a twenty-hectare farm on Via Laurentina, just outside the Gates of Rome. Here, at the expense of the Holy See, someone had created a farm with a promising future.

The Ranch

A few hundred meters away from the Laurentino cemetery, consecrated on March 9, 2002, is the San Giuseppe Agricultural Company. We are in Roma Sud, the area of the capital city where there is perhaps the biggest building boom. Here the craving for cement has been translated into the Fonte Laurentina neighborhood, with thousands of low-rent apartments in the vicinity of the Great Ring Road, the expressway that circles the city, popularly known as the GRA.

For now, however, fields and farmland still dominate the landscape, and the area is relatively peaceful, an oasis of rest and relaxation from the chaos of the metropolis, were it not for the macabre discovery, on March 8, 2011, of the mutilated torso of a woman bound in wire, with all of her organs removed; a crime that is still shrouded in mystery.

The San Giuseppe Agricultural Company, on Via Laurentina 1351, registered as a sole proprietorship on June 8, 2011. Twenty-two hectares cultivated primarily with wheat (for animal feed), medicinal herbs, and olive trees. There were originally eight hundred trees, whose fruit produced olive oil through a cold press. The name of the company is announced by a simple sign at the entrance to the farm, showing in block letters the names of the farmers, a family of Romanians—father, mother, and two children—who cultivate the land. They live there in a house owned by APSA, with a no-rent lease. Their surveillance became indispensable after this promising agricultural realty became the logistical base of a gang of thieves. Cardinal Calcagno explained this circumstance in a letter to Versaldi on May 29, 2013, in response to urgent requests for clarification from the Commission:

The fence had been cut at various points and an out-of-the-way area of the farm had been used by a gang of thieves as a deposit for stolen electric material (copper wire). This was reported to the Carabinieri at the Via Ardeatina station, who conducted a stakeout to surprise the thieves when they were recovering the loot. During a violent storm that hit the area during the night, while the Carabinieri unit was away, the thieves made off with the loot.

Once past the gate, the visitor is immersed in nature. On the right is a dirt road, lined by rows of olive trees, with twenty-two plants on each side, leading to a farmhouse that seems to be uninhabited but is well cared for. On either side of the second floor, the stucco has been redone and the casings are new, as if only one part of the house had been recently restructured. The path toward the house, a couple of hundred meters long, is quite pleasant: the visitor is welcomed by turkeys, hens, geese, and a couple of peacocks (a male and a female) that have the bad habit of singing at night, keeping the neighbors awake. In the barn there are three horses and two donkeys. The garden has everything—tomatoes, garlic, onions, peppers, melons, eggplant, potatoes, watermelon, cauliflower. And strawberries, planted for the children and for other guests of the farmer's wife.

According to the neighbors, other characters often appear at the farm. Important figures: eminences and excellencies. “I was taking my grandson to play in the fields this summer when he suddenly disappeared from sight and it scared the living daylights out of me,” a woman who has been living there since the 1960s told me. “I saw him again a few seconds later near an elderly man carrying a cane and wearing a long, threadbare black coat. I thought he was a shepherd, and even said to the boy, ‘leave the shepherd alone and come here!' At that the man smiled at me kindly and said, ‘Signora, I am not an ordinary shepherd. I am a shepherd, but not of sheep. I am a shepherd of souls.' At the beginning I didn't understand, so I asked him to explain himself, and he told me he was a cardinal, but to call him ‘Don Alberto,' so I did.”

The few neighbors of the San Giuseppe Agricultural Company mention other names, well-known personalities who spend a good deal of time around here. Two in particular: “Cardinals Nicora and Calcagno.” Attilio Nicora, Calcagno's predecessor at APSA, was from January 19, 2011, to January 20, 2014, the first president of the Vatican Financial Information Authority, a body that Ratzinger had created to oversee all the financial operations of the Holy See and bring them into line with the new anti-money-laundering regulations introduced by the European Union. According to the neighbors, Cardinals Nicora and Calcagno were familiar visitors to the area, which they may have been using as a country home to relax, “in the two renovated apartments inside the farmhouse.” The nephew of one cardinal, who was doing his university studies, also stayed there for a while.

Nicora had “accompanied the project and the establishment”—according to Calcagno—“of the San Giuseppe Agricultural Company, with the collaboration of Paride Marini Elisei, trusted notary of APSA and of the administrative office of the Secretariat of State. On September 13, 2011, a modal contract was drawn up between APSA and the Agricultural Firm for the leasing of the Laurentina and the Acquafredda estates.” This operation brought another forty-one hectares of land under the property of the Vatican.

But who did this land belong to? This is the beginning of another story with many question marks and few certainties. What is clear is that these twenty-two hectares once belonged to the Mollari siblings—Letizia, Giuseppina, Domitilla, and Luigi. Devout Catholics, all childless, they agreed to leave their property to the Church. This episode dates back to March 22, 1975, when Letizia, Giuseppina, Domitilla, and Commendatore Luigi—who was already an employee of APSA—decided to donate the land to the Holy See in a document signed before the notary Alessandro Marini. The donation was accepted by the Secretary of State, the same Cardinal Jean Villot whom Pope John Paul I had wanted to dismiss.
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The San Giuseppe Agricultural Company currently operates on this land. Its partners include another person whose surname is Calcagno: not Domenico, but Giuseppe. Was he perhaps a relative of the Cardinal? Verifications and investigations were attempted into this potential conflict of interest. The Prefecture requested an explanation from the Cardinal, who was so irritated that to disprove any possible connection, he even searched the gravestones in the family cemetery. Upon the return to the Vatican of the men whom we might refer to improperly as “cemetery inspectors,” Calcagno wrote, “From the information gleaned from the gravestones at the Tramontana cemetery, it is not possible to arrive at the genealogical contact point with a possible common ancestor.”

The men sent by Calcagno indicated the whole family tree, name by name, starting with his great grandfather Pietro. “When I was a seminarian I had asked the pastor”—the prelate concludes—“if I might see the parish's baptism registers. I remember that the research proved to be laborious immediately because since the late 1500s the overwhelming majority of Tramontana inhabitants were registered as ‘Calcaneus de Calcaneis.' To avoid blood relationships the men of the Calcagno family would marry women with a different surname.” Attached to his letter was a diagram from which it appeared, however, that between him and Mariangela, the wife of Giuseppe Calcagno, there was a relationship, but a very distant one: she was a fourth cousin.

The ties between the Agricultural Company and the Vatican is still strong, if it is true—as some of the farmers' relatives averred—that the Romanian family, “works for the Vatican, and it is the Vatican that brings in day laborers every now and then, when the need arises.”

The APSA database that I have seen confirms that five parcels of land at Via Laurentina 1351 do indeed belong to APSA, as do four buildings, three apartments, a “residential complex,” eleven warehouses, and three storage facilities. None of these properties appear to be rented, with the exception of the 75-square-meter house (inhabited by the farmer and his family). So who is living in the other houses? This is a mystery shrouded in the deepest secrecy. At the Holy See rumors circulated of risibly low rents—150 euros a month—offered to prelates so that they might enjoy one of these country homes, an ideal refuge outside the gates of the city. The possibility cannot be ruled out with any certainty, but according to the official figures in the database, if this were true they would have to be phantom leases: from the data in my possession those houses appear to be unrented. There is no question, however, that significant attention and interests were converging on the farm. On April 13, 2013, Francis penned a chirograph on the matter, giving Calcagno “a mandate to handle every legal action, including the right to act in a judicial forum” with regard to the farm adjacent to Acquafredda. The Pope thus gave Calcagno the possibility to divest the asset or transfer it to a third party.

Various ideas and proposals had been advanced over the years. In 2008, for example, there were plans to build a solar panel facility, an ambitious project to bring in 203,000 euros a year that unfortunately collapsed. The future of the property is still unclear. While on the one hand the company “has taken measures to deposit a reimbursement of 7,800 euros (meaning 650 euros a month),” on the other, it was receiving substantial assistance. Also, in the lease it is expressly stated that the agricultural company “has the right to request reimbursement for expenditures made or, in the event that the expenses exceed 20,000 euros for each project, to proceed to the advance sale as provided for by the lessor [the Holy See], but only after prior authorization.”