STATEMENT ON ALLEGED HOLY SEE INVOLVEMENT IN FRAUD

VATICAN CITY, MAY 15, 2002 (VIS) - Holy See Press Office Director, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, made a statement today on "the news reported by several newspapers concerning Holy See involvement in a financial fraud in which Martin Frankel is accused of being the principal architect." Navarro-Valls said: "I wish to make clear, as was already done on July 1, 1999, that:

"1. The 'Monitor Ecclesiasticus' Foundation, presided over by Msgr. Emilio Colagiovanni, was set up in the archdiocese of Naples in 1967, but is in no way a Vatican foundation; Neither is the St. Francis of Assisi Foundation, whose constitution and aims the Holy See knows nothing about;

"2. At the time of these facts, Msgr. Emilio Colagiovanni was a retired priest who no longer exercised any function within the sphere of the Holy See. In this affair, he acted purely as a private Italian citizen;

"3. Fr. Peter Jacobs was suspended 'a divinis' and warned by the ecclesiastical authorities of the archdiocese of Washington, starting in 1983;

"4. The Holy See neither received funds from nor furnished funds to the above-named foundations, as was already stated on July 1, 1999;

"5. When it became aware of these facts, the Holy See declared its total extraneousness in this regard and gave the information it had to the Attorney General of the State of Mississippi."

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