Becciu defended the use of the charitable funds for the investment last year. He told ANSA in 2019 that there was a difference between Vatican funds intended for the benefit of the poor and the proceeds of the annual Peter's Pence collection.
"The Pence is not only for the pope's almsgiving but also the funding for his pastoral ministry," Becciu said, suggesting that the Secretariat's two investments in the luxury London apartment development were an appropriate use of donated funds.
More recently, a report in Italian media claimed that documents showed Becciu handed over millions of euros of investment funds from the Secretariat of State and from Peter's Pence to Enrico Crasso, the manager of Centurion Global Fund, an investment fund used by the Secretariat of State, with links to two Swiss banks investigated or implicated in bribery and money laundering scandals.
The L'Espresso report also claimed that Becciu used Peter's Pence money to finance projects owned and operated by three of his brothers.
The Becciu family said Sept. 25, in a statement from their lawyer, that the reports were "unfounded and maliciously false, in particular for the imaginative and unprovable references to alleged donations from Peter's Pence."
In a press conference the same day, Becciu himself denied that any money from Peter's Pence was used to purchase the property at 60 Sloane Avenue in London.
In Thursday's interview, Guerrero said: "The faithful want to contribute to the mission of the Church, but a policy of external transparency and communication capable of conveying precisely how we use the money we receive and administer is essential."
Clarity on discrepancies in how Peter's Pence has been used would be a significant step towards the transparency that the Vatican says it wants to offer, and help the Church's mission to be better served by the Roman Curia and by the Catholics who support it.
Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency's senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.