The Daily Star, Nicole Winfield, April 04, 2013
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| Rev. Franco Decaminada, second right, leaves an Italy's financial police barrack after being questioned in Rome, Thursday, April 4, 2013. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) |
ROME:
Italian police on Thursday arrested a priest accused of pocketing 4 million
euros ($5.1 million) from a Catholic hospital he ran and helping run up 600
million euros ($769 million) in debts that forced it into bankruptcy.
Italy's
financial police placed the Rev. Franco Decaminada, who until 2011 was the CEO
of the IDI dermatological hospital in Rome, under house arrest. They also
detained two other people while seizing a Tuscan villa that police say
Decaminada built with stolen money.
The plight
of 1,500 IDI workers who haven't received paychecks for months had prompted
Benedict XVI in one of his last acts as pope to name a delegate in February to
take over the religious order that owns the hospital to try to bring it back to
financial health.
But in the
end the Vatican refused to provide any financial assistance and last week a
Rome court certified the hospital as insolvent.
IDI workers
have occupied the hospital's management area and are buying food to help needy
co-workers while continuing to work without pay in hopes of saving their jobs.
"After
years of suffering and eight months without salary, we at least have the
satisfaction of seeing that justice is starting to work," Bartolomeo Di
Gregorio, 56, a biomedical lab technician, told The Associated Press on
Thursday.
He welcomed
the arrival of Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi as the papal delegate to head the
religious order - the Congregation for the Children of the Immaculate Conception
- which runs the hospital, but said in the end it didn't help "because we
went into bankruptcy anyway."
The
problems at the IDI are the latest in a series of financial scandals at
Catholic-run health facilities in Italy that, while not directly involving the
Vatican, have links to its No. 2, the secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio
Bertone.
According
to leaked Vatican correspondence, Bertone looked into investing money from the
Vatican bank into a failing Milan hospital, the San Raffaele, in 2011 after it
accumulated millions in debt because of mismanagement. In the end, the hospital
went to outside investors.
But
Bertone's apparent interest in building up a Vatican health care network in
Italy has been cited as evidence of his own administrative failings in running
the Holy See by focusing too much on small Italian problems and not on global
church issues.
On Thursday,
Decaminada's order sought to distance itself from his crimes, saying it was a
victim in the case and it was cooperating with investigators. It stressed that
"no member of the congregation ever saw or visited the home in Tuscany
built by Father Decaminada" and its construction was never authorized.
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