Trial testimony: Vatican wanted to pay off London broker

AP News ^ | April 5, 2022 | Nicole Winfield

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Trial testimony: Vatican wanted to pay off London broker

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The former head of the Vatican’s financial watchdog testified Tuesday that the agency launched an intelligence investigation into a suspicious London real estate deal after it learned about it but had no power to stop the Vatican secretariat of state from concluding it.

The testimony by defendant Rene Bruelhart in the Vatican’s big fraud and extortion trial again put the spotlight on Pope Francis and the No. 2 in the secretariat of state, Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra, who Bruelhart said made clear the deal had to be concluded “under any circumstances.”

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Pena Parra and his superiors have not been charged. Also escaping indictment was Pena Parra’s deputy, who actually signed the contracts with Torzi; he has turned into the prosecution’s star-witness.

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