“This was a no-brainer from a business perspective,” said a churchman familiar with the purchase, who also declined to be named as negotiations continue.
But even after the deal was sealed, there was another hurdle looming: the Vatican had to sign off on the deal, and it was far from a foregone conclusion. Just as the deal was coming together, it was revealed that Pope Benedict XVI was setting up a new Vatican office to vet the construction or purchase of major new churches around the world.
That posed a special challenge because the goal of the commission is to ensure that new cathedrals, unlike some recent designs, are not “buildings composed of cement cubes, glass boxes, crazy shapes and confused spaces (that) remind people of anything but the mystery and sacredness of a church,” as Vatican watcher Andrea Tornielli put it in his story on the new body.