Vatican Issues First Drug Conviction
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
VATICAN CITY — A Vatican court for the first time has issued a drug conviction, giving a former employee of the Holy See a four-month suspended sentence for cocaine use, reports said yesterday.
The man worked in a Holy See administrative office and was recently fired because an Italian criminal court had convicted him of other offenses outside the Vatican, according to La Repubblica, the Rome daily. The Vatican tribunal convicted him of possessing cocaine, which was found in a drawer in the room where he worked, La Repubblica said.
La Repubblica quoted a Vatican judge, Gianluigi Marrone, as saying that the Vatican’s legal code does not address illegal narcotics. Instead, the judges relied on international anti-drug conventions to which the Holy See is a signatory, Mr. Marrone was quoted as saying.
Another basis for the tribunal’s decision was a 1929 Vatican law that allows verdicts in cases not covered specifically by its laws but that involve injury to “health, morality, and religion,” La Repubblica quoted the judge as saying.
