“There is no default in the Vatican,” Bishop Nunzio Galantino, the president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), told Avvenire.it (October 22).
“We only need a spending review, and that's what we're doing,” he adds.
Galantino explains the 2018 losses of APSA with an “extraordinary intervention” aimed at saving a Catholic hospital “and the jobs of its employees.”
APSA administrates 2,400 apartments mostly in Rome and Castel Gandolfo, as well as 600 shops and offices.
According to Galantino about 60% of the apartments are rented to “needy” Vatican employees who pay a reduced rent. Galantino calls this “a form of social housing”: “If large private companies do so, they are welcome and take care of their staff, if the Vatican does it, we're incompetent.”
For him, it’s pointless to estimate the market value of the Vatican real estate. Galantino gives the example of the buildings in Piazza Pio XII, “If you turn them into an extra-luxury hotel it’s one thing, …More