It handles accounts for the Pope, his cardinals and religious orders, and has only one branch inside the apostolic palace in Rome.
Pope Francis has decided to shun a grand papal apartment on the top floor of the Vatican's Apostolic Palace in favour of a modest two-room residence.
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had a reputation as a humble pastor who even in high office commuted to work by bus, lived in an apartment rather than an apostolic palace and cooked his own meals.
He has so far declined to move into the grand papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace, preferring to stay for now at a Vatican guesthouse where he has been living and dining with other clergy.
The famous art historian and scholar Giorgio Vasari, writing in the second edition of his Lives of the Artists in 1568, mentioned that Pinturicchio's painting was "over the door of a room in the Apostolic Palace".
The rooms are simple and impersonal, but a step up from the cramped conditions the cardinals faced before the hotel was put to use in 2005, when long lines would form at the Apostolic Palace for using bathrooms.
The BBC's David Willey in Rome says that after the prayer recital on Sunday the Pope plans to spend the rest of the week on a Lenten prayer retreat closeted inside the Apostolic Palace with senior cardinals and bishops.
Pope Francis will continue to use the papal library on the second floor of the Apostolic palace for receiving official guests and will appear on Sundays at the window used by previous popes to address pilgrims in St Peters Square.
It was during that visit that the world saw how frail Benedict had become in the three weeks since his emotional departure from the Apostolic Palace: Always a man with a purposeful walk, he shuffled tentatively that day, using his cane.
Cardinal Ravasi was chosen by the Pope to lead a six-day traditional Lenten retreat inside the Apostolic Palace during which the Pope each year cancels all public engagements and remains closeted for a period of spiritual meditation among his closest advisers.
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