A Catholic prelate at the centre of a suspected money-smuggling operation denied stealing and laundering cash in a letter he sent to Pope Francis from his jail cell which his lawyers released yesterday.

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, who is the target of two Italian criminal investigations, also said in the letter he tried to fight abusive activities by lay superiors in the Vatican’s financial administration, which Pope Francis wants to reform.

Mgr Scarano worked for years as a senior accountant at the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, or Apsa. Through Apsa, he had access to the Vati-can bank, where he had at least two accounts.

Though not directly implicated in the money smuggling investigation, the Vatican bank has faced growing criticism for its persistent failure to meet international transparency standards. Pope Francis has inherited a Church struggling to deal with several other scandals related to priests’ sexual abuse of children, alleged corruption and infighting in the central bureaucracy.

“I have never laundered dirty money, I have never stolen,” Scarano said in the handwritten letter to Pope Francis which his lawyers said he wrote on July 19. He said he had documents to hand over to Pope Francis which would help efforts to “finally reform the sad reality” of the Vatican’s financial administration, and all the “connected abuses”.