Former Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone strongly denied Monday Italian media reports claiming that the prelate will move into an "opulent" flat measuring as much as 700 square meters in the Vatican while Pope Francis makes do with humbler lodgings.
"In recent days some media outlets have spoken malevolently about the apartment where I will live in the Vatican and, to worsen the public humiliation, their 'informant' has doubled the square meters," Bertone said in a letter to two diocesan newspapers. "It has been said, among other things, that the pope was furious with me for so much opulence. The size of 'my' apartment has even been compared to the presumed restricted nature of the residence of the pope," he added in the letter to the diocesan weeklies of Genoa and Vercelli.
Since his election last year, in a move criticised by some conservative Catholics, Francis has decided not to move into the vast papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace used by his predecessors, choosing instead to remain in a suite in the Santa Marta guesthouse used by cardinals during the papal Conclave. "Above all let us thank God and the concern of many for the fact that the pope is lodged and assisted in a dignified fashion at Santa Marta where he can easily carry out his institutional business," said the prelate.
"Personally I am grateful for the affectionate telephone call I received from Pope Francis April 23 to express his solidarity and disappointment over the attacks levelled at me over the apartment, which he was informed about as soon as they happened".
Many people had telephoned the prelate from his old dioceses to express their solidarity over the affair, he added. "The spacious apartment, as was normal in the residences of the old Vatican palaces, restructured as necessary at my own expense, has been made available for my use temporarily and after me will be used by someone else," he added. "As Saint Pope John XXIII used to say 'I will not stop to pick up the stones that are thrown at me".
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