Vatican evicts tenants to make hotels
Pastor Dale Morgan
Vatican evicts tenants to make hotels*
By Malcolm Moore in Rome and Alessandro Speciale
Last Updated: 1:20am BST 25/05/2007
[ROME] For centuries, the Vatican has bestowed a special kind of charity
on the residents of Rome, providing low-rent accommodation in the vast
number of properties it owns in the heart of the Italian capital.
Zita Di Lucantonio with her mother at the Piazza Farnese: Vatican evicts
tenants to make hotels
Zita Di Lucantonio with her mother at the Piazza Farnese. She
has lived there all her life but has been given an eviction notice
But recently the Holy See has suddenly turned on many of its tenants,
demanding higher rents or threatening to throw them out.
An association of residents, formed in protest at the seemingly
un-Christian behaviour, said the Vatican wanted to convert their
apartments into hotels or commercial premises.
Franco Lattughi, a 65-year-old tour guide, said his rent had been raised
from £480 a month to £1,400. "When I was given the apartment, it had
been donated to the Church and was in a very poor state.
"I spent all my savings, 200 million lire (£70,000), to decorate the
place, on the understanding that I would be able to live here for the
rest of my life with a fixed rent. That is what the Church told me," he
said.
Many of the residents who are being forced out said they had nowhere
else to go.
Zita Di Lucantonio, 50, has lived in an apartment on the Piazza Farnese
for her entire life. The building is managed by the Fraternal Order of
Santa Maria della Quercia dei Macellai, which is trying to evict her and
her family.
"We are the last people who live in the building. The others have caved
in to the pressure, but I have a daughter and an old disabled mother,"
she said. "We are not rich, we live on my mother's pension but we have
always paid the rent."
Eviction notices have also been served on five other major apartment
blocks in central Rome. The elderly residents of a palazzo in Via
Giulia, all over 70, were turned out when the building was made into a
five-star hotel, the St George, where rooms now cost €400 a night. Many
of the residents had lived in the building since the Second World War.
The Vatican owns a quarter of the buildings in central Rome and last
year, another 8,000 properties were gifted to the Catholic Church in
wills. The Vatican's total assets are estimated at around £4 billion but
its Rome properties are officially only worth a few million pounds.
While property prices in central Rome have doubled in the past five
years, the Vatican's properties have not been revalued since 1929. St
Peter's basilica is valued at only 65 pence in the official Vatican
accounts, since it could never be sold.
The appeal of converting some of the Church-owned properties into hotels
is clear.
Vatican buildings are not subject to any council tax, even if they lie
outside the Holy See. In addition, businesses run by religious
enterprises get a 50 per cent discount on corporation tax.
In Italy as a whole, there are 3,300 hotels run by religious bodies,
which offer 200,000 beds and have an annual turnover of £3 billion. In
Rome, a baroque building designed by Francesco Borromini and owned by
the Sisters of the Order of St Mary of the Seven Sorrows in Trastevere
is being converted into a 62-room hotel.
Cardinal Attilio Nicora, who heads the unit that controls the Vatican's
property and equity holdings, has completely restructured the Holy See's
finances since he arrived in 2002.
He made a profit of £33 million in 2004/5 from the sale of various
buildings. The money more than covered the heavy losses from running
Vatican Radio and Romano Osservatore, the official newspaper.