Cardinal Angelo Becciu | Vatican News
Cardinal Angelo Becciu, 75. A verdict in his two and a half year Vatican “trial of the century” will come on December 14, 15 or 16. But behind this trial with 10 defendants, there are larger forces working, many Italian observers are saying…
“Each session of the [Vatican] trial has added an aspect to an overall desolate panorama: secret investigations of which the defense lawyers never knew anything, a dense network of scandals, irregularities, carelessness… fierce conflicts between the various institutions of the Vatican State. And finally… a decisive change in the traditional political balance within the Holy See: a dramatic loss of image, competencies and power for the Secretariat of State, with the IOR [the Vatican bank] increasingly on the winner’s podium.” –One of Italy’s most respected historians and writers, Ernesto Galli della Loggia, 81, for 30 years a columnist in Italy’s leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera of Milan, in an essay yesterday, December 11, on the Vatican’s “trial of the century.” He says the trial represents a moment in an ongoing “power struggle” between elements of the Vatican; specifically, between the Secretariat of State (traditionally the most powerful Vatican office) and the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), the “Vatican bank,” which has 15,000 account holders and is a clearinghouse for funds to go around the world to religious orders, schools, hospitals, and other Catholic initiatives. Galli della Loggia says the IOR is winning this round…
“The IOR is the victim of (Tommaso) Di Ruzza‘s disloyalty.” (Note: the word for “disloyalty” in Italian is “slealtà“) —Italian Roberto Lipari, the young and talented lawyer for the Vatican bank, known as the IOR (Istituto per le Opere di Religione = IOR, meaning “The Institute for the Works of Religion”), speaking at the Vatican trial on Monday, December 11 (yesterday, link). The IOR has been constituted as a civil party in the trial, and is asking for hundreds of millions in “damages” for losses the Secretariat of State did actually suffer in the London property deal —funds the IOR lawyer claims were “misused (for speculative investments) under Vatican law.” Tommaso Di Ruzza was an official of the Vatican’s financial oversight agency, AIF (Financial Information Authority) and he did not impede the request by the Secretariat of State for a loan from the IOR of $150 million to complete the London Palace deal. IOR officials flagged that 2018 loan request as “suspicious” and an internal Vatican investigation was launched. This was the precise moment when the investigation which led to this trial began. Di Ruzza was one of five employees and officials suspended and blocked from entering the Vatican after Vatican gendarmes raided the Secretariat of State and AIF offices on October 1, 2019 (link)
Letter #178, 2023, Tuesday, December 12: Trial #3
What a trial…
The Vatican “trial of the century”…
Two and a half years now… two and a half years(!) since July 27, 2021…
And it will end this week… (final defense arguments are being made this morning in Rome as I write).
Two and a half years, and the expenditure of millions and millions of dollars (nobody knows the real total) on legal fees, staff and security to manage the trial, equipment to record all the testimony, and every other cost (including all the time spent by hundreds of journalists over three years to write about this trial month after month), to prove… what?
Apparently, to prove that Cardinal Angelo Becciu, 75, from 2011 to 2018 the #3 man in the Vatican, is guilty of crimes, including “peculato,” meaning theft or embezzlement of funds, under Vatican City State law. (More on the accusations below.)
Becciu has maintained his innocence throughout the trial.
And no evidence has been produced during the two and a half years of the trial that Becciu has received even one euro or one dollar of funds into any account, anywhere, associated with him…
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“Get Becciu!”
This trial, according to many Italian observers, has always been, in the end, about… convicting Becciu.
For more than five years — the entire first half of the pontificate of Pope Francis (from 2013 to mid-2018) — Becciu was Pope Francis’ “right-hand man” as the Vatican’s respected (and feared) Deputy Secretary of State, the so-called “Sostituto.”
He saw Francis at least once every week, and huddled with him as needed over which direction to take on various issues of Church life.
The walk between where Francis lives in the Domus Santa Marta, where Francis lives and works, and the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio, where Becciu resides, takes about seven minutes…
So Becciu was without a doubt one of Francis’ most trusted aides.
Then, and quite suddenly, this trial.
This trial has been, these Italian observers contend, always and fundamentally about finding Becciu guilty, and thus removing him…
— from the Pope’s side
— from a key role in determining Vatican policy, especially economic policy
— from being a voting member of the College of Cardinals
— from participating in an eventual papal conclave
— from bringing his 50 years of experience and wisdom, his 50 years of “institutional memory,” to bear on the future challenges of the Church
— from being a “King-maker” or even… an actual candidate(!)… at a future papal election…
This trial is about “getting Becciu.”
The other nine defendants in this trial, though some are important and wealthy financiers, are nevertheless all secondary in importance to Becciu.
But, as the first quote at the top of this letter states, this trial is also a power struggle within the Vatican.
A struggle to control the Vatican’s wealth, the Vatican’s resources, the Vatican’s vaults and storerooms with its centuries-old treasure…
And Becciu is only one casualty, albeit a high-ranking one, in this larger battle…
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The charges and their validity
Becciu’s name has already been blackened, perhaps forever, by the allegations against him.
So already a key result has been obtained by those who wished Becciu “out.”
Even if later this week Becciu is found innocent, his wings, as it were, have been clipped due to the horrible press he has received for years, both in Italy and everywhere else around the world.
From the press accounts that have been published — and thousands of articles have been written about Becciu and this case, a true volcano of media reports — Becciu appears (though none of the allegations have yet been proved) as the archetype of “the evil Italian curial official,” the man who will (these press accounts suggest) use any and every means to increase his power and decrease the power of his competitors or opponents, a corrupt man who will seek to wrongly increase his own wealth and the wealth of those who assist him — including some of his own family members.
Whatever the judges in the trial decide, Becciu has already suffered a type of media vilification that is astonishing. Whatever happened to “innocent until proven guilty”?
Becciu’s friends and defenders, along with Becciu himself, say this is all nonsense and all to be expected — all an attempt to “destroy Becciu” because Becciu is, in fact, they say, even now a faithful and loyal aide to the Pope (“leale” is the word in Italian for “loyal,” with “sleale” being the word for “disloyal”; it is a word Italian like to use when speaking of serious alliances, and serious betrayals).
So in this context, the decision to charge Becciu with a number of crimes was already a type of condemnation for “disloyalty.”
It was also a signal to the world’s media that it was “open season” on Becciu.
A signal that the Pope had lost trust in Becciu, and removed him from the protective aura of papal authority and grace, which in the world of the Vatican means… everything.
And so the more than three years that have passed since Becciu was stripped by Francis of his right to vote in a papal conclave and was charged with various crimes of corruption and embezzlement of funds have been bitter years for Becciu.
A cloud has come over the man who once was a great power in the Church, and highly respected by many.
And all this is quite unprecedented, since Becciu is the first cardinal ever to be tried in the Vatican in this way.
Normally, a cardinal would be judged by a tribunal or commission of his peers = other cardinals.
But Becciu is being judged by three laymen, albeit laymen with distinguished legal careers in Italy — laymen judging a cardinal has never happened before.
It is one more sign that in 2023 the hierarchical structure of the Church is no longer as impregnable, as changeless, as for centuries it was. Cardinals, too, are now, evidently, inside Vatican City, subject to normal prosecution by the court of the City State.
Some see a precedent for Becciu’s treatment in the treatment of another cardinal 500 years ago, as the Protestant Reformation got underway: Cardinal Giovanni Morone (1509-1580), who was tried by the Roman Inquisition. Elevated to the cardinalate by Pope Paul III, Morone worked to ensure imperial support of the pending general council of the Church — the Council of Trent, the Council called to respond to the Reformation. However, Morone’s even-handedness (he talked with the Protestants) brought him under scrutiny, along with other irenic figures such as Reginald Pole. Eventually tried by the Roman Inquisition under Paul IV and imprisoned in the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, Morone was only freed after the pontiff’s death. Then, Morone went on to become a leading figure in the Council of Trent’s final phase, negotiating with various factions and bringing the Council to a conclusion. The rest of his life would revolve around the same themes: diplomatic expertise with German-speaking lands, attempts to implement Tridentine reform, and the specter of heresy that lingered from his trial before the Inquisition. (link)
What happened to Morone in the 1500s is perhaps a partial precedent for what is happening today to Becciu…
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The charges
So what are the charges against Becciu?
They are, essentially, three:
1) London.
The charge is that Becciu approved a risky, money-losing and illegal under Vatican law investment in an expensive London building which resulted in the Vatican Secretariat of State losing tens of millions… (estimates on the exact loss vary a bit; Crux reports that the Vatican lost roughly 150 million pounds — $201,618,000(!) — on the investment, mostly due to a burdensome mortgage and generous fees to its business brokers.)
Here below is a brief timeline of the London investment. Many writers make it appear that Becciu alone is responsible for the whole story, i.e. the investment, the exit of the fund, the purchase of the Palace, its sale and the loss of the 200 million.
But a look at the dates of the various phases makes clear that Becciu was no longer a factor in the last years of the decision-making, because he left the office of “Sostituto” when he was made a cardinal in June of 2018.
2014: an investment of 160 million euros is made in the Palace of London, with a contractual agreement to keep the funds in the investment for 5 years with a clause to extend the “lock-up” period for another two years if there was a major “event” which materially altered the financial environment. That event occurred in 2016 when, due to Brexit — Britain’s voting to “exit” from the European Union — the “lock-up” was extended for another two years
June 2018 — Becciu leaves the position of Substitute;
November 2018 — The Vatican Secretariat of State leaves the Raffaele Mincione Fund, buys the building in question, and chooses to have it managed by Gianluigi Torzi‘s (link) company.
May – June 2019: the Secretariat of State asks the IOR for a loan of 150 million euros. The request is… denied. And flagged as a crime…
2022 — the Vatican (APSA on behalf of the Pope) sells the London Palace at a tremendous loss
End London Palace timeline.
2) The Italian “secret agent” to help release the hostage nun.
The charge is that Becciu hired a fairly young Italian woman (she was in her late 30s) named Cecilia Marogna (the Italian press calls her “La Marogna”) to help the Vatican as a “secret agent” in efforts to facilitate the safe release of a Colombian Catholic nun who had been kidnapped and was being held for ransom by Muslim radicals in Mali in West Africa… but that Becciu had a personal interest in the woman and that the funds that went to her were spent in part on expensive hotels and purchases of expensive handbags and similar personal items (link).
In fact, the nun was not freed by the Vatican’s efforts, but by the Italian secret services. The President of Malì, however, did recognize that the nun’s release was due to negotiations that began before the presence of the Italians. Those negotiations started at the time the Vatican, by hiring Marogna, became involved.
Becciu has always maintained that the operation to save the Colombian nun kidnapped in Mali was authorized by the Pope, including the amount allocated to this operation. He has also maintained that the operation was a secret one that only he (as Substitute) and the Pope knew about.
The London agency Inkermann (link) was contacted to assist the operation. In order to dispel any suspicion of the Vatican’s involvement, “La Marogna” was appointed to act as an intermediary between the Agency and Becciu. As the time when the closest contacts with the nun’s captors approached, the Inkermann Agency suggested, to keep the operation secret, to create a company and a bank account that neither the Vatican nor Inkermann would be the owners of. Marogna was asked to undertake this. A company was created and a bank account opened in Ljubljana in Slovenia and the Secretariat of State sent the sum of 500,000 euros to the account of that company in various installments to be used for the nun’s release. The first installment was sent when Becciu was Substitute, the later installments were sent when Archbishop Penna Parra was Substitute (he took the post in October of 2018). All of this was done, Becciu maintains, with the authorization of the Pope.
In the trial, the prosecutors have claimed that part of the money entrusted to Marogna was used by her for personal expenses (300,000 out of the 500,000 euros). It has been the position of Becciu and his lawyers that Becciu knew nothing about those personal expenses until mid-2020, and was officially informed by the Vatican gendarmes in October 2020 that the funds seemed to have left the account for personal reasons. (Misuse or personal use of these funds has been denied by Marogna herself, who is also one of the defendants in the trial, on this charge.) The Vatican prosecutor, Alessandro Diddi, has charged Becciu with using this entire scheme to enrich Marogna, not to free the kidnapped nun.
3) Becciu’s brother.
The Vatican has charged that Becciu saw to it that 125,000 euros were sent from the Vatican Secretariat of State to the account of the charitable agency Caritas in Ozieri, Sardinia, where Becciu is from and where one of his younger brothers, Antonio Becciu worked as the head of the Spes Cooperative. (link)
So, these are the main charges against Becciu (this is a summary, and some points have been left out for the sake of brevity):
1) misusing funds on the purchase of the London palace;
2) enriching a private person, “La Marogna,” with Vatican funds; and
3) helping his own brother with Vatican funds.
Innocent, or guilty?
First, it will be up to the three judges, of course, to decide if Becciu — along with the nine other defendants — is guilty.
Still, we may ask “unofficially,” while we wait for the verdict, whether the evidence presented at the trial seems preponderant for either the innocence or the guilt of the cardinal.
1) The London deal.
The Vatican invested in the London property at first in 2014, then fully purchased the property in 2019. Then, without developing it as planned, the Vatican sold the property in 2022 at a loss of (it is estimated) more than $200 million.
But whose fault was the loss?
If the Vatican had spent the money to develop the building as planned, and had held the building until today (late 2023), not rushing to sell the building at a rock-bottom price in 2022, the Vatican might actually have broken even on the investment, or even… made money!
The real question is: why, once the first investment was made, did the rest of the plan to develop the building and have it generate a considerable cash flow go sour?
The answer seems to be: because another Vatican entity besides the Secretariat of State denied the Secretariat of State’s 2019 request for a $150 million loan to complete the deal.
In addition, that entity flagged the loan request as illegal under Vatican law, and by that flagging started the wheels in motion which led to this trial.
What was that other Vatican entity?
The Institute for the Works of Religion, the IOR — commonly known as the Vatican Bank.
In a sense, then, this trial is about one entity inside the Vatican objecting to another entity inside the Vatican borrowing funds to complete an investment deal in a property in London that might have earned a considerable profit if it had been developed correctly.
Why, in fact, did this all unravel and lead to the abandonment of the plan to develop the building, a hasty sale at a rock-bottom price to Bain Capital, and a multi-year, multi-million dollar trial which has made the Vatican appear to be a den of thieves robbing the donations of the Catholic of the world (Peter’s Pence) to line their own pockets?
As Ernesto Galli della Loggia says in the first quote at the top of this letter, because there is a struggle occurring for control of the Vatican’s monetary resources, and those engaged in the war have not been prevented by any higher authority from pursuing this disastrous course through to its sad conclusion.
So, looking at the entire, complex “London Palace” case, it does not seem clear that Becciu is guilty of any illegal act.
Leaving the selling price and timing of the sale aside, the fact is that Becciu did not approve the hasty sale at all; he had nothing whatsoever to do with the sale, because he was promoted out of his decision-making post as “Sostituto” in June 2018, four years before the sale…
So is there a crime associated in the loss incurred with regard to the London building?
The judges will decide in the next few days.
2) The “La Marogna” affair.
Cardinal Becciu did hire a young woman who claimed to be a “secret agent” to help ensure the safe release of a Colombian nun, Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez who was being held for ransom by Muslim radicals.
However, the Pope also approved the hiring, and the nun was, in fact, freed without being harmed. (link)
In fact, to this extent, the operation was a success. The nun is alive.
3) The Becciu brothers.
It is true that 125,000 euros were sent from the Vatican to the account of Caritas in Sardinia, where one of Becciu’s brothers works.
But 100,000 euros of the 125,000 still remains in the Caritas account, and 25,000 euros were used to rebuild a bakery which now employs several people of modest means, and contributes something quite positive to the lives of the Italians living in Sardinia.
This could be the most “serious” of the charges against Becciu, because it does seem that there might be the appearance of “nepotism” or using Church funds for the assistance of family members.
And yet, it is certainly the case that many others who were not relatives were helped, and note: no illicit withdrawal of funds by the brother has been discovered.
It seems that it would be disproportionate, and so a type of injustice, that a two and a half year trial, costing millions and millions of dollars, would be prepared, initiated and carried out to hold Becciu to account for what, in the end, seems to be 25,000 euros sent to Sardinia to support the rebuilding of a bakery to produce bread.
Conclusion
Conclusion: whatever is the verdict that is handed down on Thursday the 14th, or Friday the 15th, or Saturday the 16th, this trial, on this massive scale, should, arguably, never have occurred.
The very fact that it did occur suggests the chaos and confusion of the Vatican’s present monetary planning and governance.
Regarding all of the matters under investigation, there could easily have been guidelines and checkpoints in place to help assure administratively that Church funds were handled in the most effective and productive way.
More importantly, the verdicts in this trial could be a tragic miscarriage of justice which may allow control of the Vatican’s money — the Church’s money — to fall eventually into the hands of people who do not have the best interests of the Church, and of the faith, in mind.
In this sense, the verdicts that are coming are important, but in a different way than almost everyone understands.
Because what is at stake in this trial in the largest sense is, as so often in the history of the Church, the liberty of the Church — libertas Ecclesiae: the freedom of the Church to carry out the mandate of Christ to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth, and in so doing, to bring Christ Himself, the Logos of God, to all men. —RM
Here are two useful pieces about this case. The first reports on the arguments at the trial yesterday, the last full day of presentation of the prosecution’s case.
The second is an important piece by Ernesto Galli della Loggia, 81, one of Italy’s most prominent “public intellectuals.”
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Vatican trial, Parolin’s letter: prosecute and punish all crimes (link)
A letter from the Secretary of State was read in the hall at the conclusion of the 84th hearing of the proceedings on the management of Holy See funds. Today the response of the civil parties and the promoter Diddi: “No other argument from the defense than to attack our Office. All principles of fair trial were respected.” On the Perlasca memorial: “Never been the cornerstone of the investigation. The testimonies of Ciferri and Chaouqui equal to zero”
By Salvatore Cernuzio – Vatican City
December 11, 2023
“Following a position already taken by the Secretariat of State, I confirm the request to prosecute and punish all crimes which are acted upon at the request of a party and of which the Secretariat of State is considered an offended party”. With a letter, the Cardinal Vatican Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, intervenes for the first time in the trial for the management of the Holy See’s funds, which has now come to an end after two and a half years with the sentence scheduled for the end of this week.
It was the Deputy Promoter of Justice, Gianluca Perone, who read the “declaration” of the Secretary of State, dated 6 November but communicated today to the Office of the Promoter, in the multipurpose hall of the Vatican Museums, in response to a request from the same Office regarding the lack of a complaint by the Secretariat of State and confirmation of whether there was the will to proceed.
Attacks on the Sponsor’s Office
Parolin’s letter concluded the more than 9 hours of the 84th hearing, dedicated to the replies of the promoter Alessandro Diddi and the four civil parties: Asif, Ior, Apsa, Secretariat of State and Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, former head of the administrative office.
A hearing which was added after the conclusion of the hearing on 6 December last in which Diddi, over an entire morning, responded point by point to the arguments of the defense which, unanimously, stated that the hearing phase itself would have crumbled the accusatory framework, bringing out not evidence but “false accusations” and “prejudices.” All “aggressive insults towards the Promoter of Justice”, said Diddi: “It is the demonstration that in many cases the defense had no other arguments than to attack us.” “There are defenders, however — he added — who have not even considered the written indictment.” He then cited chats, emails, pieces of interrogations or information: “All completely ignored”.
Becciu’s “entry” into the investigations
In particular, the Becciu defense, Diddi underlined, “forgot how the cardinal entered the investigation” in which he was not initially involved: “It was Becciu who, when there was still no trace of his person, did everything to enter the trial by defending the London operation”, i.e. the sale of the Sloane Avenue building which caused a huge economic loss for the Holy See and which is at the center of the judicial proceedings. According to the Vatican public prosecutor, from 2019 and early 2020 the former deputy of the Secretariat of State would have started a real “press campaign against the Office of the Promoter who would have been mistaken about the investigation”
The principles of due process are respected
Replying to other defense findings, Diddi branded as “heresy on a legal level” the accusation that “on the level of international law the Vatican City has not implemented the ECHR” (the European Convention on Human Rights) for the principles of due process. “The cross-examination was totally respected, all defenses were given full voice, there was never the slightest obstructionism… These are false problems.”
The Perlasca memorial
Again, Diddi focused on the well-known memorial deposited on 31 August 2020 by Monsignor Perlasca, from which most of the accusations against Becciu came and whose genesis – as emerged – was conditioned by a “triangulation” between Perlasca, his friend Genoveffa Ciferri and the PR Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui. “Someone said that the memorial was the ‘cornerstone of the investigation’. It is not… Apart from the Marogna case (the Sardinian manager who allegedly used the money provided by the Holy See for the release of a nun for personal expenses and was therefore accused, ed.), Perlasca did not give any investigative ideas, but on the palace in London, the monsignor has a position that has had no impact on fraud, embezzlement, etc.” And Ciferri and Chaouqui? “The importance of these witnesses is zero,” said the promoter.
The Pope’s rescripta
In his reply Diddi then touched on the topic of the Pope’s rescripta which arose during the investigations and which would have changed the methods; a point criticized by all the defense lawyers because, among other things, they would have allowed the promoter to select as he pleased the documents to be delivered to the defenses. “I understand that in making defenses you have to stress the data…” Diddi replied, but the rescripta “had the function of regulating otherwise unregulated activities”. They were therefore “a guarantee towards all those who suffered this type of activity”.
The “Sardinia affair” and the “Marogna affair”
Space in the four hours of intervention also included the other accusations against Cardinal Becciu, i.e. the “Sardinia affair” (the defense “did not deal with the results of the investigation by the Gdf of Oristano” on the diocese of Ozieri and the Spes cooperative) and the “Marogna affair” (“If it were true that Becciu was deceived, why didn’t he report it? Why is he still meeting her in 2021? Why is he hosting her at his house?”). But above all Diddi highlighted “the Pope did not authorize the money to Marogna, because he knew nothing about her, but to the British company Inkerman”, in charge of mediation to free the Colombian nun kidnapped in Mali.
He then reiterated his conclusions and requests.
The response of the civil parties
The civil parties also did the same today regarding compensation. In particular, the IOR focused “on the restitution and the damage”:
“That of the IOR is an independent damage, rigorously demonstrated,” said the lawyer Roberto Lipari who pointed the finger at the former director of the then AIF, Tommaso Di Ruzza who “knew well the problems linked to the London affair” but nevertheless pushed for the deal to go ahead: “The IOR is the victim of Di Ruzza’s disloyalty.” As well as that of Renè Brüllhart, former president “who took De Franssu (Ior president) by the arm and said: ‘Why are you so stubborn? Give him this money and we’ll cover you.”
A reference to the financing requested by the Secretariat of State to close what the lawyer Paola Severino, civil party of the SdS, defined as a “painful affair” where the first to be “deceived” were Cardinal Parolin and the substitute Monsignor Edgar Peña Parra. Severino also spoke of a “requalification” of the charges and thanked the Court for “the breadth of the hearing” which allowed “some issues to be settled and to clarify in what capacity and positions the subjects of this painful affair were found.” Both ideas were taken up by Professor Giovanni Maria Flick, APSA civil party, who instead spoke of a “painful affair” at the center of a trial during which “everyone’s rights were defended”.
Tomorrow, December 12, the defense lawyers will give their rulings. Last time before the sentence that will conclude the longest and most controversial trial the Holy See has ever known.
(End, Salvatore Cernuzio piece)
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Vatican: the verdicts of the Becciu trial (link)
by Ernesto Galli della Loggia (link)
December 11, 2023
Now close to the moment of the verdict, the trial of Cardinal (Angelo) Becciu has ended up transforming, not just into a trial, but certainly into a decisive denial to his accusers. Moreover, it was foreseeable that if the court had not allowed itself to be intimidated (as fortunately happened) things would have gone more or less like this. And never mind if, due to the limited “coverage” that the press gave to the trial, public opinion did not have the opportunity to adequately realize it.
In fact, the already glaring anomalies, let’s call them euphemistically so, prior to the trial itself were not enough — the early condemnation of the accused implicit in having the Pope initially strip him of his rights as a cardinal, the four provisions with which in the proceedings already underway the Pope has repeatedly changed the rules of the procedure (but only for this trial and therefore only to the detriment of the accused) — not even the infamous Monsignor (Alberto) Perlasca was enough, benevolently transformed, coincidentally, from Becciu’s co-defendant into a witness for the prosecution against him.
To all this, each session of the trial added an aspect of an overall desolate panorama: secret investigations of which the defense lawyers never knew anything, a dense network of scandals, irregularities, carelessness, current accounts ciphers that emerged at every moment, shadows of corruption, dubious real estate investments, fierce conflicts between the various institutions of the Vatican State. And finally, almost simultaneously, in the background (but in a clear relationship with what was happening during the trial) a decisive change in the traditional political balance within the Holy See: the dramatic loss of image, competencies and power by the Secretariat of State, and the IOR, on the other hand, increasingly on the winner’s podium.
In short, he came out with everything in these two years in the Vatican courtroom. But above all, Cardinal Becciu’s substantial innocence emerged from the accusations made against him. I write substantial because in the long and complex activity of a career like his, I challenge any lawyer not to be able to find some omitted opinion that should have been requested, some administrative procedure not perfectly carried out, some insignificant “abuse of office”. But he was not certain of similar things that the high Sardinian prelate had to respond to, as we know. Rather than having been an unfaithful and corrupt servant of the Holy See, having knowingly caused it significant financial damage with the asset management of the London building in Sloane Square, and lastly having used his position to fraudulently favor relatives and acquaintances. All accusations fell thunderously into oblivion during the two long years of the trial.
So does all this mean his probable acquittal? It’s not said at all. Indeed, it was precisely the blatant inconsistency of the increasingly evident accusation that was able to reveal the true, entirely political nature of this trial. Political nature largely obscure but at least in one aspect sensational, since only the full involvement of the highest authority of the Vatican State – that is, of the person of the Pope – in the preparation of the trial itself and in its conduct actually made it possible as it took place. And therefore it is precisely such an involvement that makes the outcome of the process itself more delicate than ever. How far, in fact, will that involvement go? And with what intention?
This is the real question that is called to answer the verdict expected in a few days that the court has the difficult task of issuing but behind which it is more than natural that public opinion imagines the conditioning weight of the Pope’s orientation. A suspicion that especially in these hours must particularly weigh on the shoulders of President Pignatone. Given the results of the hearing, a surprising pronouncement of guilt on the part of the accused according to the delirious demands of the prosecution (seven and counting years in prison) has been ruled out, and the hypocritical solution of a “sentence” has also been ruled out (the mountain that gives birth to the classic little mouse), just to show that the trial still had a reason to exist, only one path seems to open up capable of concluding this gray affair in a not unworthy way. And that is, that the decision-making authority convinces itself to title Becciu’s acquittal. May the Pope, assisted by the advice of President Pignatone, understand, even if he changes his mind, that on the basis of the trial results, that is the only right choice. Not only and not so much an absolution but the acknowledgment of the truth. Yes, even if we change our minds: hasn’t Bergoglio accustomed us during his pontificate to sudden turning points, to sudden changes in moods and perspectives, to twists and turns? This would put an end to a story in which the real reasons and background, the real actors, still remain in the deepest shadow and in which perhaps it wasn’t even the Pope himself who was really pulling the strings.
(End, Galli della Loggia)
So, on or before Saturday, December 16, the three-man judges’ panel will issue its verdict… just in time for Christmas… —RM
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