Vatican / Who is in charge?

For some months now – since last year – there has been an uproar in the Vatican. The climate is heavy. A much-lauded trial for financial scandals with accused clergy and laity – “trial of the century” the media called it -, open secular “interventions” afterwards, anonymous complaints and fraternal “nailings” have created an atmosphere of suspicion and doubt in the papal state. Questions about what is really going on in his power havens are mounting.

The story begins almost three years ago, in July 2021. At the Vatican criminal court, a big trial begins with ten defendants, including for the first time a powerful cardinal, Angelo Becciu, once No3 in the power pyramid. The defendants are defended by an army of a total of 27 lawyers. From the beginning the trial seemed to be balancing on a delicate thread of procedural validity, and the main reason for this, as it turns out in hindsight through a series of deductions, was none other than the fact that the Pope has absolute power in the Vatican. Prosecutors have argued that the trial cannot be conducted under Italian law because it is not the same as Vatican law, but also that Vatican law must be “translated” based on the Canon Law of the Catholic Church. The defense questioned from the beginning the validity of the decisions of Pope Francis that opened the way to the trial, mainly in what had to do with the lifting of the immunity, by him, of Cardinal Bequio. The prosecutors rejected these objections out of hand. In conclusion, the Vatican is a idiosyncratic absolute monarchy, the Pope has legislative, executive and judicial power in his hands and is therefore its main legislator.

Two months before the trial was due to begin, Pope Francis changed legislation on offenses “within” the Vatican, ruling that top bishops working at the Holy See who break the law will now be tried by a criminal, non-ecclesiastical court. That is, they will not receive special treatment by being tried by a tribunal composed of other high-ranking clerics.

Annoying changes

The law change came eight years after Pope Francis announced reforms to the Vatican state. Just three days after his election in 2013, he had laid out his vision of what the Catholic Church should be like. “Oh, how I would love a poor church… for the poor” he had characteristically said. In a preface to the decree on changes to the judicial system, Pope Francis emphasized that Church Law should not include privileges “that go back in time and are inconsistent with the individual responsibilities” of those who serve in the seat of the Catholic Church. Henceforth prosecutors and judges would only need his consent for investigations against senior clerics. “Today there is a need to proceed with some further changes in the judicial system of the Vatican City State in order to ensure that everyone will receive a trial articulated on many levels and in accordance with the dynamics followed by the most advanced legal experiences at the international level,” he wrote Pope Francis. It also banned Vatican employees from accepting gifts worth more than 40 euros, while under the new law cardinals and various managers and trustees of church property will have to disclose their investments to ensure they are in line with church doctrine. Church.

Pope Francis has made clear from the start his intentions regarding the management of the Vatican’s finances, a sensitive issue that has long been shrouded in opacity and suspicions of corruption. In order to put things in order and implement his “program”, in 2015 he established a new department in the administrative apparatus, the Secretariat of Finance, and placed as its manager an “outsider” – as church circles described him – in the opaque and secretive world of the bureaucracy of the papal state, Australian Cardinal George Pell. It was a choice that upset many. Especially when Pell immediately got to work, announcing in every direction: “We are working to ensure that international financial standards are respected in all departments of the Holy See. We aim for substantial transparency. Our ambition is to become a model of financial management and not the cause of occasional scandals.” In less than a year sweeping changes had taken effect. The Vatican Bank has closed thousands of suspicious accounts and signed cooperation agreements with Germany, Italy and the US for full transparency and information sharing to fight tax evasion and money laundering.

Reactions

In overseeing many of these radical changes, Pell’s rough and tumble manner irritated the old guard who felt that the “foreigner” had concentrated too much power in his hands. “When it comes to money and assets, the Vatican always becomes a snake hole,” says veteran papal state analyst Marco Politi directly and bluntly to the American news network NPR. Another relevant analyst, the American Gerard O’Connell, notes that Pope Francis knew that the placement of the Australian George Pell in this post would cause reactions, as “interests and a whole network of money that had been set up for decades were affected” . Following instructions from the Pope, Pell insisted that all funds received from outside sources by the various departments of the Vatican must be entered on its balance sheet. According to O’Connell, this means closing off money escape routes and making it difficult for financial tricks under the guise of “shell” activity. “They can no longer keep money in their coffers to use for other purposes … People were giving money, but they were also trying to influence matters of church policy, even cardinal nominations,” says O’Connell.

However, it was not just the lifting of Cardinal Bequiu’s immunity that seemed problematic from the start. The Pope is said to have made other controversial, and supposedly legally challengeable, decisions to ensure a thorough investigation before the trial began, and it lasted two full years. It thus allowed prosecutors to authorize the wiretapping of suspects’ telephone conversations. At the same time, the apologists for the mysteries of the papal state and the institutions of power within the Catholic Church raised a delicate issue in relation to papal decisions: how could judges and prosecutors in this peculiar Vatican monarchy ever say “no , this man is not guilty’ since the Pope had more or less already condemned him. This was a big issue from the beginning of the trial, which continued after the verdict…

The indictment

In December 2023, after a two-and-a-half-year hearing that was marred at times by the strong reactions of the defense, the Vatican’s criminal court sentenced Cardinal Becciu to five-and-a-half years in prison on charges of embezzlement and eight other lay people to longer or shorter terms, while he released one of them. The indictment was particularly heavy, including almost fifty crimes, which was also the subject of criticism mainly in terms of their documentation.

The trial centered on the Vatican’s €350m investment to convert the former warehouse of London’s historic Harrods department store into a luxury apartment complex. Prosecutors alleged that high-ranking clerics, middlemen and brokers “ate” tens of millions of euros from the Holy See in fees and commissions and then extorted another 15 million from it just to give it control of the building. It should be noted that Bekiu was basically convicted of embezzlement in relation to the initial investment of 200 million in a fund, through which the project in London was financed, and was cleared of many other charges. He was also convicted of embezzling a €125,000 “donation” from Vatican coffers to a charity run by his brother in Sardinia, as well as using Holy See money to pay a financial analyst, who in turn she was sentenced because she used this money for her own benefit. However, the court acquitted many of the defendants on other, more serious charges, including fraud, corruption and money laundering, adding to the sense that these crimes were simply not being documented. In fact, one defendant, Bequio’s former secretary, archpriest Mauro Carlino, was acquitted.

Much of the indictment was based on the transfer of the property from one London broker named Muccione to another in late 2018. Prosecutors alleged that the second broker, Gianluigi Torgi, defrauded the Vatican to secure full control of the building, from which he only renounced when the Holy See paid him 15 million euros. For prosecutors, this was tantamount to extortion. For the defense and a British judge who rejected the Vatican’s request to seize Torzi’s assets was simply “an exit from a legally binding negotiated contract”. Ultimately, the court sentenced Torzi to six years in prison on several charges, including extortion, but acquitted Muccione of, among other things, the charge of overvaluing the building when the Vatican bought it.

Shots against the Pope

The trial was initially seen as a sign of Pope Francis’ will to crack down on corruption and corruption. But it ultimately appeared to backfire for the Holy See, the Associated Press reports, with many revelations coming to light during the contentious trial about vendettas, espionage and even ransom payments to Islamist militants. This whole situation shook the image of the papal state.

As if all this were not enough, several prominent jurists subsequently published detailed academic reviews and legal opinions on the hearing, arguing that there had been violations of basic rights of defense and the rule of law, warning that this trial could in the future have ” consequences’ for the Holy See. Criticism focused on Pope Francis’ role in the trial, as he allegedly secretly changed the law four times while investigating the case to benefit prosecutors. They also questioned the independence and impartiality of the court, as its judges swear obedience to the Pope, that is, to the one who hires them and can fire them if he wants. Reference was also made to the international image of the peculiar micro-state of the Holy See, essentially an absolute monarchy, where the Pope exercises supreme legislative, executive and judicial power.

Defense lawyers had initially challenged the legality of the trial, arguing that their clients could not have a fair trial in an absolute monarchy where the Pope has already intervened in the case and prosecutors have failed to present key incriminating evidence. According to experts, it is possible that these legal opinions will be included in the appeals of those convicted within the Vatican judicial system, but also in their possible appeals to other higher courts. They could also be taken into account during the ongoing review of the Holy See’s compliance with European Rule of Law rules at the Council of Europe.

The turn of events – and possibly other behind closed doors – is already having an impact on the acceptance of Pope Francis. Late last month an unidentified cardinal with the pseudonym “Dimos II” published an anonymous letter under the title “The Vatican Tomorrow”, calling Pope Francis “authoritarian”, “vindictive”, “intolerant”, “ambiguous” and presenting a “strategy” that will ensure that his influence in the Vatican will end with his papacy! Rumor has it that the author of the letter is not one, but many. They call themselves “Dimos II” so as not to be confused with the author of another similar letter, who signed himself as “Dimos” and was later revealed to be Cardinal Pell, that is, the one to whom Pope Francis had entrusted the “clean hands” operation! Pell could not be “District II” as he died last year, while his letter was titled “The Vatican Today” and the new one is titled “The Vatican Tomorrow”… Church analysts point out that such public attacks by cardinals who have oath of allegiance to the Pope have never existed in modern times, and of course there have been neither against Pope John Paul nor against his successor Benedict.