Vatican’s ‘Trial of the Century,’ Which Convicted a Cardinal Who Served as Pope Francis’s Chief of Staff, Headed to Retrial

The order for a retrial of Giovanni Angelo Cardinal Becciu, the first prince of the church convicted in a Vatican City court rather than by his fellow cardinals or papal fiat, is a stunning turn in the appeal of a case watchers of the Papacy have called the “trial of the century.” Cardinal Becchiu, who once served as chief of staff to Pope Francis, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison in 2023 after being convicted of financial crimes. This week an appellate tribunal found that prosecutors withheld evidence in the case, which ended in convictions for all 10 defendants, including the cardinal.The cardinal was first charged in 2019 with fraud, embezzlement, abuse of office, money laundering, and extortion. The charges stem from a London real estate transaction that left the Vatican on the hook for a loss of some €140 million after a €350 million investment in a luxury Chelsea apartment building. Four years later, the Sardinian cardinal was sentenced to five years in prison and permanently disqualified from public office. The Times reckoned that the verdict surfaced the “prevalence of financial malfeasance and incompetence at the highest levels of the church.” That Cardinal Becciu was even tried in a criminal court was a function of reforms introduced by Pope Francis. Prior to the 266th pontiff, cardinals were tried not in criminal courts but by their fellow cardinals — a Vatican version of what the American Constitution calls a “jury of their peers.”At the zenith of Cardinal Becciu’s power he was second in command at the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and was rumored to be a papabile, or candidate for Pope. He met with the Pope nearly every day as part of what has been called “the most complex job in the Roman Curia” and “the administrative success or failure of a papacy.”Cardinal Becciu’s indictment was personally approved by Pope Francis. Correspondence between the cardinal and the pontiff was introduced into evidence in the case. After the Holy See court handed down his conviction and stripped him of his red robes, Cardinal Becciu attended the pope’s funeral and even insisted on his right to vote in the 2025 conclave. That resulted in the dramatic unveiling of a letter written by Pope Francis before his death banning the erstwhile cardinal from choosing his successor.Pope Francis kneels before a priest to confess, during a penitential liturgy in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. AP/Andrew Medichini, PoolNow the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority in the Catholic Church — save the Pope, on ecclesiastical matters — has ruled that prosecutors mishandled the case against Cardinal Becciu. The appellate court, which dates from the 13th century and sits at Palazzo della Cancelleria, found that prosecutors made procedural errors that undermined the right of the accused to a fair defense. The ruling, which Vatican law calls a “relative nullity,” is something less than a full victory for Cardinal Becciu. The verdict is not entirely overturned, but instead part of the proceedings will be reheard in June. Prosecutors have been ordered to deposit the unredacted record of all investigative documents with the court clerk’s office by April 30.Extraordinarily, the Signatura also ruled that some of the errors that marred the fairness of Cardinal Becciu’s trial can be attributable to the previous Vicar of Christ. Pope Francis’s rulings changing the administration of justice in the Curia — alterations that affected Cardinal Becciu’s case — were not properly publicized. In American law, notice has long been viewed by courts as a fundament of due process under the 14th Amendment. Pope Leo XIV, who is trained as a canon lawyer, spoke to the Vatican’s legal apparatus last weekend. He declared that “Love and truth cannot be separated: only by loving do we know the truth, and the love of truth leads us to discover charity as its fulfillment. For this reason, justice, when it is exercised with balance and fidelity to the truth, becomes one of the most stable factors of unity within the community.”

Vatican’s ‘Trial of the Century,’ Which Convicted a Cardinal Who Served as Pope Francis’s Chief of Staff, Headed to Retrial

Vatican’s ‘Trial of the Century,’ Which Convicted a Cardinal Who Served as Pope Francis’s Chief of Staff, Headed to Retrial

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