VATICAN CITY (AP) — The appeals phase of the Vatican’s “trial of the century” resumed Tuesday after a pair of setbacks for the pope’s prosecutors that could have major repercussions on the outcome of the troubled case.
The case concerns the once-powerful Cardinal Angelo Becciu and eight other defendants, who were convicted of a handful of financial crimes in 2023 after a lengthy two-year trial.
However, the Vatican’s high Court of Cassation recently upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss prosecutors’ appeal entirely. That means defendants can only hope that their verdicts and sentences will be improved, if not overturned.
On the same day as the Cassation ruling, the Vatican’s chief prosecutor, Alessandro Diddi, also dropped months of objections and abruptly resigned from the case, rather than face the possibility that the Cassation court would order his dismissal.
The problem lies in Diddi’s role in a now infamous set of WhatsApp chats that have called into question the credibility of the entire trial. The chats, which document a years-long behind-the-scenes effort to target Becciu, suggest questionable conduct by Vatican police, Vatican prosecutors and Pope Francis himself.
Several defense attorneys had argued that the chats showed Diddi was not impartial in his handling of evidence and witnesses and was unfit to continue in his role. Diddi rejected their arguments as “unfounded” and complained bitterly to the cardinal judges of Cassation.
But he recused himself anyway “to prevent insinuations and falsehoods about me from being exploited to damage and harm the process of clarifying the truth and affirming justice.”
If the Cassation had actually ruled against Diddi and found her role incompatible, the entire case could have resulted in a mistrial or a declaration of annulment. As it stands, the appeals court has ruled that Diddi’s activities as a prosecutor were valid, even if he later recused himself.
The beginnings
The original trial opened in 2021 focused on the Vatican’s 350 million euro ($413 million) investment in a property in London. Prosecutors alleged that Vatican intermediaries and monsignors defrauded the Holy See of tens of millions of euros in fees and commissions to acquire the property, and then extorted the Holy See for 15 million euros to give up control of it.
Main tangents
The original investigation generated two main tangents involving Becciu, a once-powerful cardinal, who was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to five and a half years in prison.
Eight other defendants
The court convicted eight other defendants of embezzlement, abuse of power, fraud and other charges, but acquitted them of many charges. All defendants maintained their innocence and appealed.
Secondary charges
Prosecutors also appealed, as the court largely dismissed their overall theory of a vast conspiracy to defraud the Holy See and instead convicted the defendants on a handful of serious but secondary charges.
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