On Saturday, Becciu — the primary cardinal to be tried by the Vatican’s little-known legal courtroom — was discovered responsible of three counts of embezzlement and sentenced to 5 years and 6 months in a verdict learn out in a transformed quarter of the museum that homes the Sistine Chapel. He was acquitted of expenses of cash laundering, abuse of workplace and influencing a witness.
Becciu’s attorneys mentioned they’d attraction the choice. However the ruling put the cardinal nearer to one in every of Vatican Metropolis’s handful of jail cells — a end result that quantities to each an affirmation of accountability and a humiliation for an establishment that has struggled for many years to root out corruption.
Becciu was barred from holding any Vatican workplace and fined 8,000 euros (round $8,700).
The trial, a hodgepodge of expenses heard over a marathon of 86 courtroom hearings, supplied an uncommon glimpse into the murky world of Vatican funds and Pope Francis’s marketing campaign for accountability — even, critics argued, at the price of due course of.
Eight of Becciu’s co-defendants — Vatican officers, Italian enterprise executives, consultants and brokers — had been discovered responsible of monetary crimes or abuse of workplace. A ninth was acquitted of all expenses.
However the star defendant was Becciu, a papal confidant earlier than a shock 2020 assembly throughout which Francis dramatically confronted him with the accusations in opposition to him.
In response, Becciu resigned as head of the Vatican division that leads the canonization course of. Francis stripped him of his privileges as cardinal earlier than any discovering of guilt. Later, a few of these rights had been unofficially reinstated.
The courtroom ordered the responsible to pay the Vatican greater than $200 million in restitution.
The Vatican, nonetheless, additionally emerges worse for put on, with new questions raised in regards to the effectiveness and equity of its authorized system. The prosecution, portrayed by church leaders as an train in transparency, appeared to backfire in key methods, bringing undesirable consideration to the intrigue, infighting and ineptitude at coronary heart of the Holy See.
“The pope ended up kicking a hornets’ nest,” mentioned Giovanni Maria Vian, a former editor of the Vatican newspaper.
The sweeping investigation was prompted by a unhealthy Vatican funding in a tony London property that led to huge losses. As prosecutors dug, they found transfers of 200 million euros accredited by Becciu in 2013 and 2014 and wired in connection to the London deal. The courtroom discovered that the transactions had been embezzlement.
Different senior Vatican officers who signed off on the London deal had been by no means indicted, and the pope had been apprised of it.
Becciu was additionally discovered responsible of illegally funneling 125,000 euros (about $136,400) to a Sardinian charity run by his brother and transferring 570,000 euros (about $622,000) to Cecilia Marogna, a Sardinian girl with a humanitarian group in Slovenia who, Becciu mentioned, was supposed to assist free a kidnapped nun.
A lawyer for Becciu rejected the decision.
“We’re sure that the proceedings have confirmed the cardinal’s innocence,” lawyer Fabio Viglione mentioned.
Viglione mentioned Becciu was “embittered” by the decision and insisted he had at all times acted in “settlement along with his superiors.”
“We aren’t giving up,” Viglione mentioned.
Earlier than the trial, Francis accredited secret edicts geared toward empowering prosecutors, together with one which allowed investigators to interact in wiretapping. Supporters mentioned the pope was rising transparency; critics known as it overreach by a person who guidelines Vatican Metropolis as an absolute monarch.
Vatican prosecutors had been affected by setbacks, together with questions in regards to the credibility of their star witness and revelations that he had been coached by a Becciu adversary. However the verdict, they mentioned, vindicated them.
“We had been advised we had been incompetent and ignorant,” mentioned Alessandro Diddi, who led the prosecution. “They mentioned all types of issues. However in actuality, the top end result proved us proper.”
A pope elected with a mandate to reform the Roman Curia — the opaque paperwork that runs Vatican Metropolis — was seen as having made strides towards bettering monetary transparency. The Vatican financial institution, lengthy tainted by secretive accounting and money-laundering scandals, underwent a cleanup through the previous decade, a course of begun below Pope Benedict XVI and accelerated below Francis.
Francis has additionally required Vatican officers to signal pledges declaring that they haven’t any belongings in tax havens and banned staff from accepting presents price greater than $50.
The Becciu case “says loads in regards to the pope’s will — theatrical and spectacular — to wash home,” mentioned the Italian journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi, a famous Vatican watcher. “Becciu turned a kind of image, or a scapegoat … of a system that needed to be handled eventually.”
Diddi sought jail sentences between 4 and 13 years for the defendants, in addition to practically 500 million euros in restitution. Becciu maintained his “absolute innocence” and contended he didn’t steal “a single euro.”
Some questioned why the Vatican sought to prosecute the difficult case that ran from Britain to Slovenia to Italy within the first place slightly than flip it over to better-equipped Italian authorities.
Becciu, who served at one time as de facto chief of workers of the Vatican’s secretariat of state, traveled regularly with Francis and was seen as one of many few males throughout the Holy See who may knock freely on the pope’s door.
Throughout his time in that submit, the secretariat invested in a luxurious constructing on London’s modern Sloane Avenue via an Italian financier, Raffaele Mincione. The property as soon as served as warehouses for the Harrods division retailer.
With upgrades, the Vatican was alleged to make a mint. As a substitute, it turned out that the property had been radically overvalued. It was bought final yr at a $175 million loss.
However earlier than that, makes an attempt by the secretariat to refinance a mortgage via the Vatican financial institution set off alarm bells that acquired again to the pope and triggered the broader investigation.
Throughout the trial, Becciu decried his transformation from pious cleric to “monster.” Behind the scenes, he got down to show his innocence. In 2021, he wrote letters to Francis, urging the pope to verify he had information of, and even supported, the London deal.
Becciu additionally requested Francis to confess he had prior information of the settlement with Marogna, the girl with the Slovenian charity who was paid a charge for unclear companies. Becciu has mentioned he believed the cash was going to help the liberation of Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez, a Colombian nun kidnapped in 2017 in Mali.
Marogna was convicted of embezzlement Saturday and sentenced to 3 years and 9 months.
Becciu secretly recorded a cellphone name wherein Francis appeared sympathetic to his plight. However a follow-up letter wherein he requested for the pope’s assist in opposition to the costs drew a frosty response in legalese, wherein Francis expressed his “shock” at Becciu’s request and mentioned he couldn’t assist him.
“I remorse to tell you that I can’t comply together with your request,” the pope wrote.
The prosecutors’ case rested partly on the testimony of Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, a Vatican official who signed contracts associated to a London property in 2018. Perlasca, initially a goal of the investigation, altered his testimony and have become a witness for the prosecution in opposition to Becciu.
Former Vatican official Francesca Chaouqui — jailed for 10 months in connection to the Vatileaks scandal, which was seen as serving to immediate Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation — later testified that she had sought to affect Perlasca after blaming Becciu for taking part in a task in her downfall.