Vatican appeals court declares mistrial in the ‘trial of the century’ against a cardinal

The Vat­i­can ap­peals tri­bunal de­clared a mis­tri­al Tues­day in the Holy See’s big “tri­al of the cen­tu­ry,” a stun­ning blow to both Pope Fran­cis’ lega­cy and Vat­i­can pros­e­cu­tors who had put a car­di­nal and sev­er­al oth­er peo­ple on tri­al over al­leged fi­nan­cial crimes.

In a 16-page rul­ing, the ap­peals court ruled that Fran­cis and Vat­i­can pros­e­cu­tors both made pro­ce­dur­al er­rors that nul­li­fied the orig­i­nal in­dict­ment against Car­di­nal An­ge­lo Bec­ciu and the oth­ers and re­quired a new tri­al. The court set a June 22 as the date for the new tri­al to be­gin.

De­fense lawyers said such a rul­ing was sig­nif­i­cant if not his­toric, since it amount­ed to a Vat­i­can court de­clar­ing that an act of the pope had no ef­fect.

The rul­ing was a win for the de­fense and a huge set­back to Vat­i­can pros­e­cu­tors, who have been scram­bling to sal­vage their case. The pros­e­cu­tion and 2023 con­vic­tions against Bec­ciu and oth­ers had been held up by the Vat­i­can and late pope as ev­i­dence of his will­ing­ness to crack down on fi­nan­cial mis­con­duct in the Holy See.

A case that be­gan with a Lon­don in­vest­ment and grew

Bec­ciu’s lawyers said the rul­ing showed they were right in ar­gu­ing that the de­fense was put at an un­fair dis­ad­van­tage from the start.

“It shows that from the first mo­ment, we were right to raise the vi­o­la­tion of the right to de­fense and to re­quest that the law be re­spect­ed to have a fair tri­al,” Bec­ciu’s lawyers Fabio Viglione and Maria Con­cetta Mar­zo said in a state­ment.

The case had as its main fo­cus the Vat­i­can’s in­vest­ment of 350 mil­lion eu­ros ($413 mil­lion) in a Lon­don prop­er­ty. Pros­e­cu­tors al­leged bro­kers and Vat­i­can mon­signors fleeced 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 ($16.5 mil­lion) to cede con­trol of it.

The orig­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion spawned two main tan­gents in­volv­ing Bec­ciu, once a lead­ing Vat­i­can car­di­nal and fu­ture pa­pal con­tender. He was con­vict­ed of em­bez­zle­ment and sen­tenced to 5½ years in prison. The tri­bunal con­vict­ed eight oth­er de­fen­dants of em­bez­zle­ment, abuse of of­fice, fraud and oth­er charges and im­posed tens of mil­lions of eu­ros (dol­lars) in resti­tu­tion to the Holy See.

All de­fen­dants main­tained their in­no­cence and ap­pealed af­ter a two-year tri­al that opened a pan­do­ra’s box of un­want­ed rev­e­la­tions about pa­pal ran­som pay­ments to Is­lam­ic mil­i­tants, Vat­i­can vendet­tas, es­pi­onage and oth­er dirty laun­dry of the Holy See.

Dur­ing the ini­tial tri­al, Bec­ciu’s lawyers in par­tic­u­lar had com­plained that pros­e­cu­tors hadn’t turned over all the ev­i­dence to the de­fense, vi­o­lat­ing their right to a fair tri­al. Pros­e­cu­tors had redact­ed some doc­u­ments, with­held the cell­phone records of a key pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness and redact­ed texts among the play­ers, ar­gu­ing that such omis­sions were nec­es­sary to pro­tect the se­cre­cy of oth­er in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

De­fense lawyers al­so al­leged that four se­cret de­crees Fran­cis signed giv­ing pros­e­cu­tors wide-rang­ing pow­ers to in­ves­ti­gate vi­o­lat­ed the de­fen­dants’ right to a fair tri­al. They on­ly learned about the de­crees just be­fore the tri­al be­gan, since the de­crees were nev­er pub­lished.

The ap­peals court sides with the de­fense

The ap­peals court agreed with the de­fense ar­gu­ments.

In the rul­ing, the ap­peals court ruled that one of Fran­cis’ de­crees — which al­lowed pros­e­cu­tors to pro­ceed with­out a pre­lim­i­nary judge over­see­ing their work — amount­ed to a law that should have been pub­lished. The fail­ure to pub­lish it, or to at least let the sus­pects know about it, made it in­ef­fec­tive, the court ruled.

The court al­so de­creed that Vat­i­can pros­e­cu­tors’ fail­ure to turn over to the de­fense all their ev­i­dence nul­li­fied their orig­i­nal in­dict­ment.

The find­ing against Fran­cis’ de­cree could have wide-rang­ing im­pli­ca­tions for any new tri­al, since it throws in­to ques­tion pros­e­cu­tors’ ac­tions de­rived from the pow­ers Fran­cis grant­ed them. Chief among them was the June 2020 ar­rest of bro­ker Gi­an­lui­gi Torzi, who was held in the Vat­i­can bar­racks for 10 days of ques­tion­ing with­out charge or a judge’s war­rant, and had his cell­phones and lap­top seized.

De­fense lawyers were pleased by the rul­ing.

“The his­toric de­ci­sion by the Court of Ap­peals—which, for the first time in Vat­i­can his­to­ry, ruled that a pa­pal re­script was in­valid and void due to fail­ure to pub­lish it—in our view re­sults in the com­plete nul­li­ty of the en­tire in­ves­ti­ga­tion and tri­al,” at­tor­neys Mas­si­mo Bassi and Catal­do In­tri­eri, who rep­re­sent for­mer Vat­i­can of­fi­cial Fab­rizio Tirabassi, said in a state­ment.

The tri­bunal, head­ed by Arch­bish­op Ale­jan­dro Arel­lano Cedil­lo, or­dered pros­e­cu­tors to de­posit all the doc­u­men­ta­tion, “in their orig­i­nal form,” by April 30. It gave the de­fense un­til June 15 to pre­pare their mo­tions be­fore the June 22 start of the new tri­al.

The court stressed that it was not de­clar­ing the com­plete nul­li­ty of every act of the orig­i­nal tri­al, main­tain­ing for ex­am­ple the sta­tus of the civ­il par­ties and the orig­i­nal ac­quit­tals. De­fense lawyers said it re­mains to be seen how the ap­peals court de­cides what el­e­ments of the orig­i­nal tri­al can re­main and what must be re­done.

It was the sec­ond ma­jor blow to pros­e­cu­tors since the ap­peals phase opened last year.

In Jan­u­ary, the Vat­i­can’s high­est Court of Cas­sa­tion up­held the low­er court’s de­ci­sion to throw out the pros­e­cu­tor’s ap­peal of the first tri­al en­tire­ly be­cause pros­e­cu­tor Alessan­dro Did­di com­mit­ted an em­bar­rass­ing rook­ie pro­ce­dur­al er­ror.

On the same day as the Cas­sa­tion rul­ing, Did­di al­so dropped months of ob­jec­tions and abrupt­ly re­signed from the case, rather than face the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Cas­sa­tion court would or­der him re­moved.

Leo speaks about jus­tice, uni­ty and cred­i­bil­i­ty

Tues­day’s de­ci­sion was is­sued just days af­ter Pope Leo XIV opened the Vat­i­can’s ju­di­cial year. Leo, a canon lawyer, met Sat­ur­day with the judges and pros­e­cu­tors who over­see the ju­di­cial ap­pa­ra­tus of the Vat­i­can City State, which fol­lows its own pe­cu­liar le­gal code that is in­spired by a cen­tu­ry-old Ital­ian code and the church’s in-house canon law.

In his re­marks, Leo spoke of jus­tice as a means of fos­ter­ing uni­ty in the church and cred­i­bil­i­ty with­in an in­sti­tu­tion. His re­marks were in­ter­pret­ed by some as a ref­er­ence to how the Bec­ciu tri­al had in some ways dam­aged the Holy See’s rep­u­ta­tion be­cause of its many anom­alies.

“The ob­ser­vance of pro­ce­dur­al safe­guards, the im­par­tial­i­ty of the judge, the ef­fec­tive­ness of the right of de­fence and the rea­son­able du­ra­tion of pro­ceed­ings are not mere­ly tech­ni­cal in­stru­ments of the ju­di­cial process,” Leo said. “They con­sti­tute the con­di­tions through which the ex­er­cise of the ju­di­cial func­tion ac­quires par­tic­u­lar au­thor­i­ty and con­tributes to in­sti­tu­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty.” —ROME (AP)

_______

Sto­ry by NICOLE WIN­FIELD | As­so­ci­at­ed Press