A threatening letter containing three bullets addressed to Pope Francis has been seized by Italian police at a postal facility on the outskirts of Milan.
Italian police are investigating a death threat against Pope Francis after postmen at a sorting facility outside Milan found three bullets stashed in an envelope addressed to the pontiff.
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Postal workers called police after finding the bullets overnight at their facility in the small town of Peschiera Borromeo on the outskirts of Milan.
The envelope, sent from France, was addressed to “The Pope, Vatican City, St Peter’s Square”, police said.
Included in the letter was a note “alluding to financial operations at the Vatican”.
A Vatican spokesperson had no immediate comment.
Italy’s Carabinieri police force confirmed the bullets had been intercepted.
“We can confirm that during the night, in a sorting office in Peschiera Borromeo, Milan, the Carabinieri seized an envelope, with French postage, containing three bullets and addressed to the Pope — ‘Il Papa – Citta del Vaticano, Piazza S. Pietro in Roma’,” the statement said.
The head of the Catholic Church who leaves Rome’s Fiumicino International Airport on an official visit to Bucharest on Thursday will be heavily policed by the Vatican’s elite Swiss Guard.
The death threat comes weeks after Pope Francis, 84, underwent intestinal surgery at a hospital in Rome.
Though the pontiff has not had any formal appearances to make, he has still been in the news following a scandal involving the misappropriation of Vatican funds.
A total of 10 people, including one senior cardinal, are being tried over allegations of corruption in the Church relating to a London real estate deal.
London financiers and church staff are accused of embezzlement, fraud and corruption, in a case that has been personally approved by the pontiff, according to court papers.
Death threats are not unheard of for the men who hold the top spot in the Catholic Church.
Pope Francis’s predecessor Benedict received a letter with similar threats, and in 1981 Pope John Paul II was shot four times in an assassination attempt by a Turkish hitman who claimed to be following orders from the Kremlin.