Vatican kicks out tenants? Raises their rents to astronmical proportions!

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I just got this from a fellow Catholic who is outraged by this story.

Here it is:

telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/25/wvatican25.xml

Here is one man’s tale of woe from the link:

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.

😊

Its not pleasant reading for me. I am trying to address this to my friend, and I really dont know what to say about this.:o 😦

Can someone tell me if this is actually defensible?:confused:
 
Hellisreal said:
I just got this from a fellow Catholic who is outraged by this story.

Here it is:

telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/25/wvatican25.xml

Here is one man’s tale of woe from the link:

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.

😊

Its not pleasant reading for me. I am trying to address this to my friend, and I really dont know what to say about this.:o 😦

Can someone tell me if this is actually defensible?:confused:
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I’m not able to open the link so hard to comment. However, you quote what the man says, but what did the Vatican say? You can’t just give one side of the story and assume its true. Also 70,000 pounds on decorating seems far fetched. Decorating is simply painting and wallpapering!
 
Vatican evicts tenants to make hotels
By Malcolm Moore in Rome and Alessandro Speciale
Last Updated: 1:20am BST 25/05/2007

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. 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.
 
It’s my understanding that the Telegraph is not the most reliable ‘newspaper’ and that it routinely runs not only antiCatholic but antiChristian POV fairly frequently. Still, just as a broken clock is right twice a day, every now and then I’m sure that there are accurate reports. But I would be surprised if this is one of them. The slant and the lack of questioning of sources AND opportunity for the ‘other side’ to be heard is rather telling.
 
Hellisreal said:
I guess I will just tell him it may be slanted journalism?:confused:
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It’s more reasonable to think the Vatican is acting just like anyone else with a valuable asset. They want to maximize return on that investment. There is nothing wrong with that.
 
Although the article says “the Vatican” is evicting people, the only time the article actually names an entity doing the evictions, it’s not “the Vatican”. It’s the “Fraternal Order of…” or the “Sister of…”.

Just because you read it in print does not make it true. I’d look for a more reputable source than the “Telegraph”.
 
😃 😃
1ke said:
Although the article says “the Vatican” is evicting people, the only time the article actually names an entity doing the evictions, it’s not “the Vatican”. It’s the “Fraternal Order of…” or the “Sister of…”.

Just because you read it in print does not make it true. I’d look for a more reputable source than the “Telegraph”.
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Thank you Ike!!!

That actually really makes me feel much more secure addressing this!

I did not like the “sloppy” journalism charge, only because, I felt that was not strong enough to erase doubt!

Thank you and God bless you!

I am really happy now, and will respond finally to my friend on this one!

🙂
 
You know when 1ke or puzzleannie weigh in, the voice of reason has finally posted a response. 😉
 
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