Vatican furore over luxury flat for use of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone

It sits on the roof of an old palazzo in the centre of Rome, surrounded by a broad terrace that affords breathtaking views across the city to the mountains.

The penthouse retreat of a Forbes-list billionaire? No. The flat in question is being created in the Vatican for the man who was its most senior official.

While Pope Francis has been exhorting his clergy to live lives as simple and frugal as his own, work has been going ahead on a luxurious retirement home for Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who stepped down as the Vatican's secretary of state last October.

Reports of an extensive renovation project began to circulate in April. But it was not until last week that Italian gossip magazine Chi published the first photograph of the work being carried out on top of the Palazzo San Carlo, just inside the walls of the Vatican.

In a message to the newsletters of his former dioceses, Bertone acknowledged that his intended new residence was spacious, but said an estimate 7,500 sqft was double the true figure.

The 79-year-old prelate wrote that it was normal for flats in the Vatican's old buildings to be large.