The former abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Montecassino in Italy is under investigation for allegedly laundering hundreds of thousands of euro.
Investigators have sequestered properties and bank accounts reportedly worth just under €600,000, held in the name of Don Pietro Vittorelli (53).
Italy’s finance police believe the abbot, who resigned his post for health reasons in 2013, directed funds intended for the abbey to his own private accounts.
They believe that in a five year period, between 2008 and 2013, with the help of his brother, Massimo, a financial consultant, he withdrew some €600,000 from monastery funds.
Massimo Vittorelli then “laundered” the funds, moving them to different accounts including ones controlled by himself, his wife and his brother, the Abbot.
Prior to his resignation from the monastery in the wake of a heart attack, Vittorelli had already been the object of media speculation about his seemingly extravagant lifestyle.
When investigators examined his accounts, they found he had spent up to €34,000 per month on his credit card.
They also discovered he had travelled widely, staying in five star hotels in London, Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro.
On one occasion, when in London, he ran up a hotel bill of €7,000 and another bill of €2,000 at a Ralph Lauren store.
Coming just two days after Pope Francis reinforced his “church of the poor, for the poor” style ministry when addressing the Italian Catholic hierarchy at a national conference in Florence, this latest incident confirms one more time that not everyone is on the same page as the Pope when it comes to the question of priestly lifestyle.
Speaking to more than 2,000 people from 220 Italian dioceses, Francis said Catholics must realise “we are not living an era of change but a change of era.”
The pope reaffirmed the church’s preferential option for the poor, calling on his priests to “go forth to the streets and to the crossroads” to build meeting places and “field hospitals”.
“I would like an Italian church that is unsettled, always closer to the abandoned, the forgotten, the imperfect...I desire a happy church with the face of a mother, who understands, accompanies, caresses.”
The Pope was making these remarks just one week after the Holy See had been rocked by a series of revelations contained in two books published last week, “Via Crucis” by Gianluigi Nuzzi and “Greed” by Emiliano Fittipaldi.
Both books claim that not only are there forces in the Roman Curia opposed to the Francis reform process but also that many senior Church figures do not follow a spartan, austere and self-denying lifestyle.