Secret recordings of phone calls with the Pope, estimated financial loss for the Vatican of 190 million euros, and shifting of blame between monsignors or the Pope in a photo with the case’s actors.

These are just some “ingredients” of the trial of the century, where a cardinal sits among the defendants for the first time in history. After over two and a half years, the court case tangled like spaghetti is heading to the finale.

By the end of this week, the three-member senate of the Vatican City State Tribunal should announce the verdict against the ten defendants, mostly for economic crimes, fraud, embezzlement, abuse of office, and the like. 

There are three main points of indictment in the process.

The largest is related to a luxury property in London, worth roughly 350 million euros. After the Vatican discovered that the London business was not profitable, it tried to withdraw from it. However, the Italian broker Gianluigi Torzi controlled the building through his thousand voting shares.

Vatican officials decided to buy Torzi’s share, and although they considered the contract with him fraudulent, they did not dare to sue. The broker initially asked for 25 million euros for his share but finally received 15 million. Everything closed in May 2019.

However, the prosecutor’s office considers it blackmail, so some of the agreement’s actors face in,” trial. They propose a sentence of seven and a half years behind bars for Torzi.

Another case concerns consultant Cecilia Marogna, who allegedly used the money from the State Secretariat intended for the ransom for a kidnapped nun in Mali for personal expenses. The prosecutor is asking for four years and eight months of imprisonment for her.

Thirdly, there is the “Sardinia case”, where, according to the indictment, Cardinal Angelo Becciu allocated 100,000 euros from the State Secretariat’s coffers available for charitable activities to an organization managed by his brother.

Prosecutor Alessandro Diddi is asking for a total of 73 years in prison for all the defendants and forfeiture of property worth 417 million euros.

Cardinal: The Pope’s recording was already dead

Angelo Becciu, known in Slovakia for the beatification of Anka Kolesárová, had to give up the position of prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and also some cardinal privileges precisely because of the accusations above.

Vatican prosecutor Diddi is asking for a sentence of seven years and three months behind bars. In addition to the “Sardinia case,” the Italian cardinal is blamed for the business case in London; Becciu was a top official of the State Secretariat at the time.

Recently, the cardinal has given several television interviews where he “irons” his image and repeats that he is innocent.

He even took on the role of a victim, and although he helped the Pope with the financial reform of the Holy See, behind his accusation are the people he stood against. Poor Australian Cardinal George Pell had the opposite opinion on Becciu’s role in Vatican finances.

During the court hearings, it was revealed that Angelo Becciu called the Pope in July 2021, three days before the start of the trial, and asked him to confirm that he had approved the payments for the release of the kidnapped nun in Mali, which is one of the charges.

According to the Catholic News Agency, their conversation was secretly recorded on the mobile phone of a family friend of Cardinal Becciu.

In an interview with Italian RAI television, Becciu was asked why he recorded the phone call with the Pope using another person. “I already explained it to the Pope. And the Pope understood it well. That phone call was already dead. Nobody knew about him. I never used it; some others wanted to publish it instead of me,” responded Becciu, referring to the fact that the recording was pulled as part of the legal process.

In the same interview, Becciu defended himself that he never stole. “I have never improved my economic situation: I have no villas, no houses, no apartments, and my bills are very, very modest,” he said on television.

However, the American portal The Pillar points out that, although the cardinal talks about his bank accounts as very modest, when his agreement with Cecilia Marogna was brought to the attention of Interpol, the Vatican police testified that he offered Becciu the return of money – more than half a million euros – from his account in the Vatican bank IOR and asked the authorities to maintain confidentiality.

Financial records also show, according to Pillar, that the money Beccia sent to Marogna was spent on branded goods, luxury travel and five-star resorts.

It is not just about the guilt and innocence of the defendants

Commentators and observers of the trial have been saying for a long time that the verdict in this case will tell a lot about the entire judicial and financial system of the Vatican.

The process is revolutionary not only because a cardinal is among the defendants, but Vaticanist Andrea Gagliarducci, who reports from individual court hearings, pointed out that the sovereignty of the Holy See may be questioned for the first time.

In London, there is a trial for defamation filed by one of the defendants in the Vatican case, Raffaele Mincione. The Supreme Court has requested the disclosure of emails, WhatsApp communications, and encrypted messages exchanged between some prelates, including Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the “number three man” in the Vatican hierarchy – Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra.

According to the London court, these messages do not constitute a “papal secret.” 

This brings us to another serious topic: the extent to which the defendants before the Vatican Court acted on the instructions and approval of their superiors. Even during the two-and-a-half-year process, the question of what the Holy Father was informed about and to what extent he intervened in the process came up several times.

The defendants steadfastly claimed in the trial that their actions were in accordance with legislative rules and that the Vatican authorities knew about them.

During the  Pope Francis with broker Torzi from December 26, 2018 in the Vatican, which is supposed to prove the Pope’s involvement in the negotiations for the London real estate transaction.

“At first it was denied that the Pope knew about it, then it was said that he was well-informed, and now it is said that he was even manipulated,” Gagliarducci commented on the development in August after the closing remarks.

American Vaticanist and commentator John L. Allan Jr. on the Crux portal, prior to the sentencing, draws attention to the fact that in the case of a verdict, it will not only be about answering the question of whether the defendants are guilty or innocent of various forms of financial crime.

Beneath the surface, according to Allan, there is another question that has far more significant consequences than the fate of these ten people. Specifically, “Is the Pope above the law?”

He thus alludes to four rescripts, i.e., Pope Francis’ exceptions, by which he granted the prosecutor broad investigative powers from July 2019 to February 2020 and which eased the way to the opening of this “process of the century.”

These four rescripts were “targeted” in his closing arguments by the lawyer Luigi Panella, who represents the defendant Enrico Crasso, an Italian banker and former financial adviser to the Vatican Secretariat of State.

According to Allan, Panella essentially tried to turn the judgment into a referendum on the limits of papal power.

At first glance, it is tempting to say that such a claim is nonsense, since the Pope is an absolute sovereign, writes John Allan. In the Catholic system, he is the supreme legislator, that is, the source of law, and therefore if he wants to abolish this right in a given case, he has every right to do so.

However, attorney Panella pointed out that modern popes support the rule of law and subject themselves and their assistants to the requirements of laws they have created. In addition, the Vatican is also a signatory to various international conventions and treaties.

However, we can hear the first verdict in this complicated case in a few days. With appeals expected, we’ll be hearing about this dispute for some time. In order not to sound too technocratic, there is an exciting point at the end, which Allan mentions in his text.

The Vatican promoter of justice (prosecutor) Alessandro Diddi also earns money as a defender of a certain Concetta Ferrari, who is accused of corruption at the Ministry of Labor.

As head of the ministry’s personnel department, she is among the seven accused in the case of the collapse of the office for assistance with pensions and social benefits.

Ferrari is alleged to have accepted “gifts” including a job for her son, a vacation to Tropea in Calabria, discounts on boat and car rentals, a Luis Vuitton handbag worth about $800 and a significant discount on an Audi Q3 for another son.

Well, the judicial spaghetti will unravel soon.