Mario Cal: The Mysterious Suicide That Has Rocked The Vatican
October 6th, 2011Via: Independent:
On a Monday morning in July, a gunshot rang out in the administration section of Milan’s San Raffaele hospital. Seconds later, a frightened secretary entered the office of the institution’s vice-president, Mario Cal, and found him lying in a pool of blood. Mr Cal clung briefly to life, but the Smith and Wesson revolver had done its job. Before long he died on one of his hospital’s own operating tables.
The suicide of the hospital administrator went largely unnoticed outside Italy. But for the powers that be at the Vatican, it was more dreadful news. The global scandal over clerical paedophilia may be the story that dominates the headlines, but as the Vatican attempts to repair its stained reputation and mend diplomatic fences after spats with Beijing and Dublin, the death of Mario Cal was an ugly reminder of problems much nearer home.
Three hundred miles north of the capital, in Italy’s second city, the battle is on to prevent a third body blow to the Vatican. This time cardinals are having to deal not with a moral abyss but a financial chasm – a shortfall of €1.5bn on the balance sheet of Milan’s San Raffaele teaching hospital, an institute with links to the Vatican whose founder, Don Luigi Verzè, is a priest and a good friend of the city’s most famous son, Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
The San Raffaele is highly regarded for the quality of its medical care and its research. But as Mr Cal’s death made clear, it is in a crisis.
Thanks to bad investments and profligate expenses unrelated to medical care that would make a tycoon blush – including personal aircraft, hotels in Sardinia, and mango plantations in South America – the hospital is on the verge of collapse, something that was said to have been distressing Mr Cal greatly, and would have proved a huge embarrassment to the Vatican.
