Powerful Vatican Cardinal Becciu resigns amid scandal
ROME (AP) — The powerful head of the Vatican's saint-making office, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, resigned Thursday from the post and renounced his rights as a cardinal amid a financial scandal that has reportedly implicated him indirectly.
The Vatican provided no details on why Pope Francis accepted Becciu's resignation in a statement issued late Thursday. In the one-sentence announcement, the Holy See said only that Francis had accepted Becciu's resignation as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints “and his rights connected to the cardinalate."
Becciu, the former powerful chief of staff in the Vatican's secretariat of state, has been implicated in a financial scandal involving the Vatican's investment in a London real estate deal that has lost the Holy See millions of euros in fees paid to middlemen.
The Vatican prosecutor has placed several Vatican officials under investigation, as well as the middlemen, but not Becciu. Becciu has denied all wrongdoing.
