The Vatican has sold charitable assets to pay down a €242m loan that was partly used to fund a luxury London property development it says caused the Catholic Church “huge losses”, people with direct knowledge of the loans said.
The loan provided by Credit Suisse was secured against a portfolio of securities that the Holy See has described as “derived from donations” held in the Swiss bank’s Lugano branch, according to documents seen by the Financial Times.
News that Catholic charitable funds were mortgaged to make risky financial investments adds to recent revelations that Vatican officials who oversaw the donations were engaged in complex financial engineering, some of which the Holy See has said resulted in losses.