Libero Milone. / Credit: Edward Pentin/EWTN/YouTube screen shot
Rome Newsroom, Jul 1, 2024 / 11:15 am (CNA).
At a July 3 appeal hearing, lawyers for former Vatican auditor Libero Milone and his recently deceased former deputy Ferruccio Panicco … […]
Cardinal Angelo Becciu. / Credit: Claude Truong Ngoc, CC BY SA 40 via Wikimedia Commons
Vatican City, Jan 5, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
After being convicted on several counts of embezzlement of Vatican funds, Cardinal Angelo Becciu gave a New Year… […]
Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu. / Credit: Alan Holdren/CNA
ACI Prensa Staff, Dec 19, 2023 / 10:15 am (CNA).
The trial of Cardinal Angelo Becciu ended Dec. 16 with the prelate being convicted of embezzlement and sentenced by the Vatican co… […]
Cardinal Angelo Becciu. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
Rome Newsroom, Nov 17, 2023 / 14:00 pm (CNA).
After almost two and a half years, the Vatican’s “trial of the century,” in which the disgraced Cardinal Angelo Becciu is a defendant, is winding … […]
Cardinal Angelo Becciu (left) at the consistory in St. Peter’s Basilica, Aug. 27, 2022. / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
Vatican City, Jul 26, 2023 / 09:33 am (CNA).
The top public prosecutor for the Vatican on Wednesday asked the judge in Cardinal Angelo Becciu’s financial malfeasance trial to serve the embattled prelate with seven years and three months in prison and to confiscate more than $15 million in connection with his alleged mismanagement of Holy See funds.
Becciu has been charged with embezzlement, abuse of office, and several other allegations regarding a series of financial investments that prosecutors claim were meant to benefit his family at the expense of the Vatican.
The trial is the culmination of more than two years of investigation by the Vatican into what happened in and around the Secretariat of State’s 350-million-euro purchase of an investment property in London between 2014 and 2018.
The Vatican maintains that the deal was problematic and designed to defraud the Secretariat of State of millions of euros.
The defendants in the trial have been adamant their actions were above board and that Vatican authorities were in the know.
Becciu has claimed the purchase of the London property was an “accepted practice.” He has also been accused of funneling tens of thousands of dollars to a charity run by his brother.
Vatican prosecutor Alessandro Diddi on Wednesday asked Judge Giuseppe Pignatone to serve Becciu with seven years and three months in prison, to fine him more than $11,000, and to confiscate upwards of $15 million.
The stiff sentencing, Diddi argued, was necessary to recompense for the “many crimes against the patrimony of the Holy See,” the Associated Press reported.
Becciu’s lawyers in the wake of Diddi’s request argued that the cardinal has always been a “loyal servant of the Church,” the AP reported.
“Not even one day would be a fair sentence,” the lawyers said.
Diddi also requested prison sentences for other defendants in the trial, including 13 years for Fabrizio Tirabassi, a former official in the administrative section of the Secretariat of State.
In addition to recommending prison sentences, the prosecutor requested the confiscation of a total of $462 million from the case’s 10 defendants.
Earlier this year during trial proceedings it was revealed that Pope Francis had rebuffed Becciu’s attempts to have the Holy Father offer his approval of the disputed transactions, with Francis telling the cardinal bluntly: “I cannot comply with your request.”
The proposal to purchase the London property “immediately seemed strange to me,” Francis told Becciu in the letters.
While Pope Francis intervened in 2020 to force Becciu’s resignation as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and barred him from the rights and privileges of cardinals, he has since unofficially reinstated the disgraced prelate, allowing him to participate in public Vatican Masses and other events.
In a 2021 interview with Spanish broadcaster COPE, Francis said he hoped “with all my heart” that the cardinal is proven to be innocent.
This week marks two years of hearings in the Vatican’s largest trial for financial crimes in the modern era, with 10 defendants and a laundry list of charges, including embezzlement, money laundering, abuse of office, misappropriation, and fraud.
Hearings will resume in September and a decision is expected before Christmas.
Pope Francis at the Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square on May 24, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, May 24, 2023 / 09:25 am (CNA).
Pope Francis has established that the auditor general of the Holy See will continue to carry out its tasks during a sede vacante.
A sede vacante is the period between the death or resignation of a pope and the election of his successor. According to Holy See law, during a sede vacante, “all heads of curial institutions and members cease from their office,” though secretaries “attend to the ordinary governance of curial institutions, taking care of ordinary business only.”
Francis ruled that the Office of the Auditor General, which does not have a secretary, may also continue its “ordinary administration” in the case of a vacant papal see.
The auditor general is responsible for auditing the financial statements of the Holy See and the Vatican City State.
It was also responsible for precipitating the investigation into the Secretariat of State’s controversial investment in a London building — a purchase now at the heart of a major Vatican finance trial.
The IOR, commonly called the Vatican bank, first agreed to give a loan to the Secretariat of State for the mortgage on the London property. But the IOR suddenly changed course and made a report to the auditor general, who investigated.
The pronouncement was part of a May 24 rescript on the tasks of the Office of the Auditor General signed by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, secretary of state. The rescript was issued following an April 24 meeting between Parolin and Pope Francis.
The pope said in light of the provisions of the Church’s apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium, “the ordinary administration, in case of a vacant Apostolic See, would not be interrupted and that the function of control would continue to be exercised by the Office of the Auditor General under the supervision of the Cardinal Camerlengo.”
The camerlengo is responsible for overseeing the preparations for a papal conclave and managing the administration of the Holy See during the sede vacante.
Pope Francis has also decided to change part of an article in the statutes of the Office of Auditor General.
According to the rescript, after analyzing suspicious activity reports, the auditor general will no longer present them to a special commission of the councilor for general affairs of the Secretariat of State, the secretary prelate of the Council for the Economy, and the secretary of the Secretariat for the Economy.
Instead, using the wording of Praedicate Evangelium in paragraph 2 of article 224, the auditor will present a report of the suspicious activity notifications to the prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, and if he deems it necessary, to the cardinal coordinator of the Council for the Economy.
This change means the Secretariat of State does not receive a report from the auditor on the suspicious activity notifications the office has received.
Suspicious activity reports that have been substantiated should continue to be transmitted to the proper judicial authorities, the rescript added.
The pope’s rescript on the function of the Office of Auditor General comes as a former Holy See auditor and his deputy sue the Secretariat of State for wrongful dismissal.
Libero Milone and Ferruccio Panicco filed the multimillion-dollar lawsuit in November 2022; after several roadblocks, the case has had court dates this year.
The two are seeking compensation for loss of earnings, damage to their reputations, and emotional suffering, which they claim they bore after being forced from their jobs in 2017.
Milone said soon after stepping down in the middle of his five-year mandate that he was “threatened” into resignation by an “old guard” opposed to his work.
Cardinal Angelo Becciu, then second-in-command at the Secretariat of State, has been said to be responsible for the firing of Milone.
Becciu told Reuters in 2017 that Milone “went against all the rules and was spying on the private lives of his superiors and staff, including me.”
The cardinal has pointed to Pope Francis, claiming the pope told him he no longer had trust in Milone and wanted Becciu to tell the auditor he should resign.
Italian Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu (right) waits prior to the start of a consistory during which 20 new cardinals are to be created by the Pope, on Aug. 27, 2022 at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. ( / Photo by ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images
Rome Newsroom, Mar 10, 2023 / 14:15 pm (CNA).
Prior to the start of his trial on financial malfeasance charges, Cardinal Angelo Becciu tried to get Pope Francis to confirm that he had authorized the financial transactions that led to Becciu’s prosecution.
The pope refused.
“I regret to inform you that I cannot comply with your request,” the pope wrote back.
The correspondence between the two, which took place in July 2021, was read and displayed in a Vatican court March 9 — an unexpected turn of events coming during the 50th hearing of the trial.
Promoter of Justice Alessandro Diddi obtained the three letters directly from the “sovereign authority,” that is, Pope Francis himself.
In one letter, dated July 20, 2021, Becciu asked the pope to confirm that he had given the go-ahead for an investment by the Secretariat of State in a luxury property in London in 2013. Not only that, Becciu also asked the pope to acknowledge that he had personally approved the hiring of an intermediary, Cecilia Marogna, to help secure the release of Sister Cecilia Narvaez, the Colombian nun kidnapped in Mali in 2017 and freed in 2021.
In a style that seems more legalistic than Pope Francis’ usual writing, the pope wrote back on July 21 to say that Becciu’s letter surprised him. Instead of granting the confirmation that Becciu sought, the pope emphasized that the proposal for the purchase of the property in London “immediately seemed strange to me.” For that reason, he wrote, “I suggested that a prior consultation be carried out with the secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and with Father Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves, prefect of the SPE, for the insights of their respective competences.”
On July 24, Cardinal Becciu telephoned Pope Francis and secretly recorded their conversation. In the phone call, Becciu complained that the pope’s letter of July 21 was like a verdict issued against him. He asked for it to be annulled, telling the pope that the tone of his letter was “entirely juridical” rather than that of a spiritual father.
Becciu asked the pope if he remembered that he gave him “the authorization to free the nun” and then told the pope that it would be enough for him if the pope said he authorized him to carry out particular operations. The pope responded by asking to send in writing “explanations and what he would like me to write.”
Becciu wrote to the pope again on July 24. In that letter, he thanked the pope for the phone call and said he he heard Francis “like a true father willing to listen to the pain of a son.”
Enclosed with the letter were two declarations that he asked the pope to sign, one regarding the London property deal and the other concerning the nun’s release.
Concerning the London property, Becciu appealed to the pope to affirm that he had considered “the proposal interesting.”
On July 26, Pope Francis responded again. He wrote that he had not clarified his “negative position” on the declarations that the cardinal wanted him to sign.
“Evidently and surprisingly, you misunderstood me,” Francis wrote.
“I regret to inform you,” he added, “that I cannot comply with your request to formally declare ‘nothing’ and therefore to ‘disregard’ the letter I had written to you.”
Italian Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu (right) waits prior to the start of a consistory during which 20 new cardinals are to be created by the Pope, on Aug. 27, 2022 at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. ( / Photo by ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images
Rome Newsroom, Feb 9, 2023 / 08:48 am (CNA).
Pope Francis met at the Vatican Thursday morning with Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who is on trial for charges related to Vatican finances.
The meeting appeared on the top of Pope Francis’ list of official audiences for Feb. 9, published by the Vatican every day at noon Rome time.
The editors of the news aggregation website Il Sismografo called the official nature of the meeting “puzzling” given that the pope and the cardinal have been in contact other times since Becciu’s fall from grace in 2020.
Becciu served as “sostituto,” or second-ranking official at the Secretariat of State, from 2011 to 2018, when Pope Francis named him a cardinal and made him head of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
Since July 2021, Becciu has been on trial in the Vatican on several finance-related charges. The trial centers on the Secretariat of State’s purchase of a London building, a controversial investment that lost the Vatican hundreds of thousands of euros. It also marks the first time a cardinal has been tried by a Vatican court of lay judges.
The 74-year-old cardinal has also been accused of using Vatican funds to help a charity run by his brother, an allegation that made waves when it was published in a major Italian newspaper in September 2020.
According to Becciu, Pope Francis referenced the accusation when he asked him to give up his Vatican job and relinquish the rights and privileges of a cardinal on Sept. 24, 2020.
Since that day, the disgraced cardinal has insisted on his innocence of all the charges.
Pope Francis has also expressed a hope in Becciu’s innocence, saying in a September 2021 interview that Becciu “is a person for whom I have a certain esteem as a person, that is to say that my wish is that he turns out well … In any case, justice will decide.”
Five months prior, in April 2021, the pope had celebrated a private Mass in the chapel in Becciu’s apartment for Holy Thursday.
More recently, the cardinal participated in Pope Francis’ Aug. 27, 2022, public consistory to create new cardinals and an Aug. 29-30 meeting of cardinals.
They were the first consistories Becciu had participated in since stepping down in September 2020.
According to the cardinal, Pope Francis had called him on Aug. 20 “to tell me that I will be reinstated in my cardinal functions.”
Becciu took the stand for the first time in the Vatican finance trial on May 5, 2022.
He is charged with embezzlement, money laundering, fraud, extortion, and abuse of office.
null / Vatican Media.
Rome Newsroom, Dec 19, 2022 / 08:45 am (CNA).
The latest round of hearings at the Vatican’s historic finance trial has revealed several twists that profoundly changed proceedings — and raised several questions for the cour… […]
Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu attends the Consistory for the creation of new Cardinals at the St. Peter’s Basilica on Aug. 27, 2022, at the Vatican. / Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images
Rome Newsroom, Nov 30, 2022 / 11:00 am (CNA).
As the Vatican trial against Cardinal Angelo Becciu and nine others rounds the corner in its 16th month, recent court hearings have introduced a few revelations about the case as well as possible new accusations against the Secretariat of State’s former No. 2.
Here are some of the latest twists and turns in the trial to prosecute people in and around the Vatican for financial crimes.
During a Nov. 24 hearing, a Vatican prosecutor played a recording of a phone call between Pope Francis and Cardinal Becciu — secretly recorded on the cellphone of Becciu’s niece.
Though media and observers had to leave the courtroom while the recording, which had not yet been admitted into evidence, was played, Italian news agency Adnkronos later published a full transcript.
The recording revealed, Vatican prosecutor Alessandro Diddi said in court, that Becciu had called Pope Francis on July 24, 2021 — 10 days after the pope had surgery on his colon and three days before the start of the trial — to ask him to confirm that he had authorized payments to free a kidnapped nun in Mali.
During the phone call, Becciu lamented that a letter from the pope repeated the same accusations of prosecutors. “I almost should not go to trial anymore because, I’m sorry, but the letter you sent me is a condemnation,” he said, according to the transcript published by Adnkronos.
The cardinal also reportedly said he would not be able to call Pope Francis as a witness in the trial, which is why he was calling him to have his statement that he had authorized the financial operations.
Francis said he wanted to stay above the fray of the trial and asked Becciu to put his questions to him in writing.
In the same hearing, Diddi said he also was investigating a new possible charge against Becciu and others: criminal conspiracy.
The accusation concerns the charge that Becciu misused Vatican funds to support the cooperative SPES — which works with the local Caritas in Becciu’s home Diocese of Ozieri in Sardinia. SPES is mostly managed by the cardinal’s family members.
Diddi said financial police in Sardinia have found falsified documents apparently used to justify a transfer of money from Caritas to SPES in 2018.
Police found that 927 transport documents for bread had actually been created in the summer of 2021, a few weeks before the start of the Vatican trial, and back-dated to 2018.
An Italian court last week rejected a defamation lawsuit filed by Cardinal Becciu against three journalists at the Italian newspaper L’Espresso.
Becciu was ordered to pay 40,000 euros in court costs to the GEDI Publishing Group, which owned L’Espresso when the complaint was filed.
The cardinal’s lawyer had argued that L’Espresso’s reporting in 2020 had cost Becciu the chance to be pope. His lawsuit asked judges to award him 10 million euros in compensation.
This was Becciu’s second lost lawsuit this month. Earlier in November, a judge in northern Italy ordered the cardinal to pay over 20,000 euros each in court costs to his former collaborator Monsignor Alberto Perlasca and Perlasca’s friend after suing them for “persecutory acts.”
In his sentence, the judge called Becciu’s lawsuit an “abuse of the procedural instrument” and also directed the cardinal to pay 9,000 euros in damages to Perlasca.
Becciu could choose to appeal the decisions.
Monsignor Perlasca, the former head of administration at the Secretariat of State, testified two days last week, his first time taking the stand during the Vatican’s finance trial. His questioning continued on Nov. 30.
Perlasca was once considered a suspect in the finance investigations, but he was never charged after volunteering information to investigators during extensive questioning in 2020 and 2021. He is now the prosecution’s star witness.
Perlasca had sought to have most of his pretrial interrogations excluded from evidence at trial. He argued that due process was not followed since he did not have a lawyer with him while questioned.
But the president of the Vatican court, Giuseppe Pignatone, denied the plea on the eve of Perlasca’s testimony, only excluding a part of one interrogation from Aug. 31, 2020.
Perlasca, who contradicted his prior statements throughout questioning Nov. 24 and 25, was warned by Pignatone to be careful of his answers — or risk being charged with perjury.
When asked about the Secretariat of State’s decisions around the purchase of the London building, the investment at the heart of the trial, Perlasca claimed to have so little power that he could not even sign his name to anything.
But the prosecutor pointed out that Perlasca’s name was signed to the “framework agreement” that transferred the management of the London property from Raffaele Mincione to Gianluigi Torzi, both defendants in the trial.
Perlasca said the “current sostituto,” or No. 2, at the Secretariat of State, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, told him to sign it.
The former right-hand man of Becciu said he did not know much about financial affairs, unlike his predecessor in the position, and distanced himself from all responsibility, despite having been the head of administration.
He said Becciu is guilty of all the charges against him and insinuated the cardinal put pressure on him, while he himself is “neither accomplice, nor conniver, nor abettor.”
Perlasca also downplayed threats of suicide he made to Becciu over messages, calling them “provocations” now being exaggerated for dramatic effect.
According to Perlasca, Becciu suggested multiple times he should visit his brother, Mario Becciu, a psychologist and licensed therapist in Rome.
A statement from Becciu’s lawyers welcomed the opportunity to examine Perlasca’s claims in court and said the priest’s testimony did not correspond to the accusations against their client.
Earlier this year, Perlasca entered the Vatican trial as a civil plaintiff, joining the Secretariat of State; the Vatican’s two financial bodies, APSA and the IOR; and internal financial watchdog authority ASIF in requesting damages.
© Catholic World Report