Judge and Defendant. The Pope’s Two Bodies, in the Trial of the Century

L'Espresso ^ | March 22, 2022 | Sandro Magister

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Judge and Defendant. The Pope’s Two Bodies, in the Trial of the Century

After nine hearings blocked by procedural obstacles, there began on March 17 what the international media are calling “the trial of the century,” conducted against Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu and other defendants mainly on account of the disastrous purchase of a building on Sloane Avenue in London, by the secretariat of state.

In the previous hearing of March 1, the judges of the Vatican tribunal presided over by Giuseppe Pignatone, in a 40-page decree, rejected as unfounded all the objections to the validity of the trial raised up to that point by the defense attorneys.

That does not change the fact that the reputation of the judicial system in place at the Vatican, which this trial is laying bare, continues to be terrible. The major international press outlets, from the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” to the “Corriere della Sera” to “The Economist,” have found themselves in agreement in judging it as deficient in the constitutive elements of a modern rule of law.

In fact, at the Vatican and in particular during this pontificate - so highly proclaimed to the world as modernizing - there is no “rule of law” that applies to everyone, because above every codified rule there is the supreme power of the pope, who at any moment orders and does what he wants without anyone being able to judge him, as stated in canon 1404 of the code of canon law: “Prima sedes a nemine iudicatur.”

It is precisely this supreme power, in fact, that marks the trial now underway, in which Pope Francis has done and undone everything as his fancy suits him.

Glaring proof of this self-will came on September 24 2020 with the public degradation of Becciu - deprived even of the “rights” of the cardinalate - carried out by Pope Francis without providing any justification, without allowing the accused to defend himself and several months before the trial against him was to be held.

But no less weighty proof is given by the four “rescripta” signed by Francis in the initial phase of the investigation, all four issued contrary to the laws in force and to the rights of defense.

Up to now these four “rescripta” were known as to their essential points, but were never published in full, much less by the Holy See. Which Settimo Cielo however does, on this other page where they can be read from start to finish in photocopy:

> I quattro “rescripta” papali del processo contro Becciu e altri

The first “rescriptum,” dated July 2 2019, is certainly the most interesting, because it sheds light - in its own way - on the genesis of the trial.

According to what Pope Francis writes there, the one who raised the first doubts about the “legitimacy” and “lawfulness” of a deal being made by the secretariat of state - the one concerning the London building - was the director of the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), the Vatican bank, from which the secretariat of state had asked but not obtained a “substantial amount of financing.”

The director of the IOR, Gian Franco Mammì, has been a close associate of Jorge Mario Bergoglio since he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, and this “confidential information” on the suspected malfeasance is thought to have convinced the pope to have the IOR carry out “investigations with the maximum rigor and maximum confidentiality.”

Hence the three provisions of this first pontifical “rescriptum”:

- the authorization for the IOR to carry out its investigations “exempt from obligations to report to other authorities of the state”;

- the order for the IOR to give “detailed accounts of the information it has to the office of the promoter of justice”;

- the provision “that for the necessary investigative activities, the office of promoter shall proceed in the forms of the summary procedure until the conclusion of the investigations themselves. With the right to adopt directly, where necessary notwithstanding the measures in effect, any type of provision, even of a preemptive nature.”

The second “rescriptum” is dated July 5 2019, just three days after the first, and authorizes both the IOR and the office of the promoter of justice to use surveillance technology against “subjects whose communication activities are considered useful for the conduct of the investigations.” And this “with the most absolute confidentiality” and with “the most appropriate methods for the acquisition, use, and storage of the evidence collected.”

The third “rescriptum” is of October 9 2019, eight days after a raid by the Vatican gendarmes on the offices of the secretariat of state and of the Financial Intelligence Authority (AIF), and authorizes the promoter of justice to use “all documents and materials - paper and electronic - seized” during the search, “without recourse in this regard to any seal of confidentiality on the part of the authorities concerned.”

(It should be noted that on account of the seizure of documents held by the AIF, carried out in defiance of strict international confidentiality constraints, the Holy See suffered temporary expulsion from the Egmont Group, the “intelligence” network of 164 states of which the Vatican is part).

Finally, the fourth “rescriptum,” dated February 13 2020, establishes that the investigations would continue to enjoy not only “all the prerogatives assigned to the office of the promoter of justice” by both the first and the second “rescripta,” but also “others that will be deemed necessary in order to ascertain the facts.”

From all this one gets an image of the trial underway at the Vatican, of which Pope Francis is both director and screenwriter, with the promoters of justice serving as his production crew.

But there is more. While from the first of the four papal “rescripta” - as well as from pope’s freewheeling statements during the press conference on November 26 2019 on the return flight from Japan - one would deduce that it all began in the summer of 2019, with the first suspicions and the investigations that later resulted in the trial, things are not that way at all.

In fact, there is another authoritative document that provides a completely different reconstruction, and it is the 20-page Information Note of substitute secretary of state Edgar Peña Parra, filed with the Vatican tribunal with the pope’s authorization that it be made public, extensively reported on by Settimo Cielo last January 3.

According to what is written in this Note, the perception at the Vatican that the London operation was anything but clear dates back at least to the autumn of 2018, as do the efforts to contain its losses. With Francis this time as lead actor.

It is the pope himself, in fact, who before and after Christmas of that year does his utmost to come to terms with the financier Gianluigi Torzi on the repurchase at a very high price - 10 million euros - of the last decisive block of shares in the London property. And this despite Peña Parra’s conviction - written in black and white in his Note - that this  was not a matter of a peaceful agreement, but the epilogue of an extortion, a “scam” at the expense of the secretariat of state.

Questioned during the preliminary hearings of the trial against Becciu and the other defendant, Msgr. Alberto Perlasca, at the time the director of the administrative office of the secretariat of state, also confirmed this involvement of the pontiff, but was harshly silenced by promoter of justice Alessandro Diddi: “Monsignor, what you are saying is beside the point! Before doing what we are doing now, we went to the Holy Father and asked him what happened, and I may have my doubts about everyone except for the Holy Father.”

Made public by a defense attorney at the trial hearing last November 17, this passage of Perlasca’s questioning led Diddi to repudiate himself, denying that he had questioned the pope.

The fact is that the outcome is surreal. With Francis figuring both as director of the trial, with his “rescripta” that have steered its development in disregard of the rights of the defense, and as co-star of the twisted plot that the trial is called to judge, according to the Note of Peña Parra validated by the pope himself. Judge and defendant at the same time.

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The summer of 2019 was particularly prolific in terms of Pope Francis’s bending Vatican rules in order to steer the trials. At least one more can be mentioned, with respect to the four “rescripta” mentioned above.

A Vatican communiqué dated September 17 of that year gave news of a “special provision of the Holy Father of last July 29 that removed the cause of inadmissibility” that prevented “the respective indictments of Fr. Gabriele Martinelli, on charges of sexual abuse that allegedly took place at the San Pio X Preparatory Seminary in the years prior to 2012, and of Fr. Enrico Radice, rector of the Preparatory Seminary at the time of the events, on charges of aiding and abetting.”

In effect, “the law in force at the time prevented the trial in the absence of a complaint from the person wronged, to be presented within one year of the facts in dispute,” which dated back several years before the complaint was filed on April 18 2018.

But Francis removed the obstacle and the trial was held. Coming to an end on October 14 2021 with the defendants’ acquittal.

The Preparatory Seminary at which the events took place was inside the Vatican walls and was closed in September of 2021.

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Ping

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From the headline, I thought we were getting ready to “Formosus” Francis.

He’d deserve it.