VATICAN CITY-Former Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has enraged papal aides by evidently casting doubt on “the presumed humbleness” of Pope Francis' lodgings compared to the prelate's "opulent" 700 Sq M apartment.

 In the wake of a rash of media attacks over the size of his newly restored penthouse, the former Vatican Secretary of State or "prime minister" of the tiny city state, appointed to the position by Benedict XVI in 2006 and replaced by Francis last year, chose to ward them off in a letter addressed to editors of publications issued in the dioceses he had governed, Vercelli and Genoa, explaining that the flat is "of normal size for a church prelate," and that Francis himself had expressed his “sympathy and support.”

 The unfortunate wording of the cardinal’s response, however, seems to suggest that the pontiff’s famously modest home -- a two room suite in the Santa Marta hostel --is not as austere as we have been led to believe, a claim which has understandably sparked much controversy in the Vatican, considering how fundamental the message of moderation and restraint has been to Francis’s emerging pontificate.

 “This way the climate in which, not without difficulties, the pope is working to reform the Roman Curia, is damaged,” Il Fatto Quotidiano quotes one Vatican prelate saying.

 The expensive restructuring works at the attic of the elegant Palazzo San Carlo in Vatican City, as a result of which two separate apartments were combined into one large residence, started soon after Francis announced that Cardinal Pietro Parolin would take over as his second-in-command last summer.

 Up until now, awaiting their completion, Cardinal Bertone remained lodged in the apartment reserved for the Secretary of State currently in charge, on the first floor of the Apostolic Palace, where Francis, who occupies a two-room suite in the Casa Santa Maria, chose not to live.  

 “The apartment is spacious, as is normal for the residences in the ancient palaces of the Vatican, and it is dutifully restored (at my expense),” argues Cardinal Bertone in his letter, published on the website of the archdiocese of Genoa, which he administered between 2002 and 2006.

 “I may temporarily use it and after me it will benefit someone else,” continues the cardinal, and concludes, “In the words of Pope Saint John XXIII, ‘I do not stop to pick up the stones that are thrown at me.’”

 Also under fire from the Italian media is the head of the Gendarmerie, the Vatican police force, who carried out a major restructuring of his plush lodgings in the Vatican that observers said would never have obtained planning permission outside the Holy See.