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Pena Parra had sought AIF’s opinion to get a loan from the Vatican bank, known as IOR, to obtain a 150 million euro loan to extinguish the mortgage on the property since the existing mortgage was too onerous, Di Ruzza said.

Two Vatican offices handle money transfers - its bank, commonly known as the IOR, and APSA, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See.

Similarly, the money sent to Australia by the IOR for its clients, typically members of religious orders, was nowhere near the amounts listed by AUSTRAC, he said.

The secretariat of state in 2018 decided to buy the building outright but needed the loan from the Vatican bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, or IOR, to buy out the other investors so it could extinguish the mortgage.

As a result, the Vatican raids appeared more the result of an internal turf battle — between the IOR on one side, and the secretariat of state and AIF on the other — over the secretariat of state’s sizeable financial holdings, which are kept outside the IOR’s shrinking coffers and off the Vatican’s balance sheet.