Vatican opens up a palazzo built on ancient Roman ruins and housing its highly secretive tribunals

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press

ROME (AP) — The Vatican has opened the doors to one of Renaissance Rome’s most spectacular palazzos in a show of transparency. The Palazzo della Cancelleria in downtown Rome is normally hidden from public view since it houses some of the Holy See’s most secretive offices: the ecclesial tribunals that decide everything from marriage annulments to plenary indulgences.The Palazzo was built in the late 1400s on the ruins of a paleo-Christian church. The head of the Vatican’s patrimony office, Monsignor Nunzio Galantino, invited television cameras into the imposing, block-long palazzo. For Galantino, Pope Francis’ call for transparency extends to the Vatican’s vast real estate holdings, which are normally closed to public view.