Vatican denies scandal link to nativity scene gift

The Vatican has said there was no link between its decision to accept the charitable gift of a ­nativity scene in St Peter’s Square and allegations that it had previously paid inflated prices to have them built.

This year’s larger-than-life tableau depicting the biblical scene of Jesus’s birth, worth about €90,000 (£73,000), was donated by the southern region of Basilicata, one of Italy’s poorest.

Some of the documents that sparked this year’s “Vatileaks” scandal indicated that in 2009, the Vatican paid an Italian company six times that amount, about €550,000, to build its nativity scene in the square. The letters, leaked to the media, mentioned the payment as an example of corruption in the city state’s business dealings.

Monsignor Giuseppe Sciacca, deputy governor of Vatican City, was asked yesterday whether accepting a donated crib was a response to the scandal.

He said: “This is exclusively the result of the offer by the Basilicata ­region to give us this gift, which, with a minimum of good sense, has been accepted.”

In the leaked documents, Sciacca’s predecessor, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, said the cost of the 2009 crib was an example of how the Vatican was losing money through corruption.