Free Republic

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis allegedly authorized negotiating an exit strategy for a key figure in the Vatican’s bungled London real estate investment and was so satisfied with the outcome that he paid for a celebratory dinner at a fancy Roman fish restaurant the night the 15-million- euro payout closed, a defendant in the Vatican’s extortion trial testified Wednesday. The testimony by Monsignor Mauro Carlino, a onetime secretary in the Vatican secretariat of state, placed the pope squarely in the center of the Vatican’s landmark trial and raised questions about why low-ranking Vatican officials were indicted and their superiors...

The second-ranking officials at the Vatican Secretariat of State engaged Italian intelligence officers to sweep his Vatican offices for bugs, a former official at the department told Vatican prosecutors. Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, who is sostituto at the Secretariat of State, along with Msgr. Mauro Carlino, asked Italian intelligence officials to examine their offices and phones for electronic surveillance, and requested information on individuals who were “trying to break into the economic structures of the Holy See with malicious intent,” according to newly-reported testimony in the Vatican’s financial crimes investigation. The testimony reportedly comes from Vincenzo Mauriello, a former lay...