Reactions to the historical judgment.

It is updated with Cardinal Becciu’s response.

The Judicial Tribunal of the Vatican City State gave Pope Francis an unusual gift on the eve of his 87th birthday. It is an unprecedented sentence against a dozen defendants in the case of economic crimes, including Cardinal Angelo Becciu.

In total, more than 600 hours of court hearings, 69 summoned witnesses, and 125,000 files resulted in a still invalid verdict on Saturday afternoon, which, among other things, sent the cardinal to five and a half years behind bars.

The native of Sardinia, Becciu, was eventually convicted of embezzlement arising from the Vatican’s original €200m investment in the fund, which he used to invest in luxury property in London.

According to the court, canon law prohibits the use of church property for such speculative investments.

The court also found the 75-year-old cardinal guilty in two other cases of the trial – in the case of church money for a charity managed by his brother and also a financial sum for Cecilia Maragna, which was supposed to go as a ransom for a kidnapped nun.

His brother Mario described him as “shocked” by “such a harsh sentence” on RAI’s main television news, saying the Vatican court “did not want to challenge the decision the Pope had already taken.”

Cardinal Becciu commented on Saturday’s verdict for the first time on Italian television Rai 1 on Monday evening.

In the show Cinque Minuti (Five minutes), he was asked by the moderator whether the Pope believes in his innocence: “I believe, and I hope so. And in any case, I will work to make it happen. I want to shout out to the world through legal instances and by all means that I am innocent, that I did not commit the crimes of which I am accused at all,” responded 75-year-old Becciu, according to Corriere della Sera .

The first cardinal in history to be convicted in the Vatican by lay judges also commented on allegations of embezzlement concernin a London business.

He claims that the advisers presented the investment project to him as feasible because it could bring great profit to the Holy See. He refused to call the operation speculative, since, according to him, similar activities were every day in the church.

Critics question the independence of the process.

Although at first glance, it might seem that the news about the verdict arouses public interest only because of the cardinal’s punishment, observers and Vaticanists analyze the court’s verdict from a broader perspective, which concerns the understanding and application of papal power.

“The trial raised questions about the rule of law in the city-state and Francis’ power as an absolute monarch, as he holds supreme legislative, executive, and judicial power and, according to the defense, exercised it in a way that threatened a fair trial,” wrote AP Vatican correspondent Nicole Winfield .

He recalls that defense lawyers for the defendants have expressed regret over the Vatican’s outdated procedural standards, which give prosecutors enormous leeway to withhold evidence.

American author John Allen Jr. draws attention to a similar dimension. , according to which, after the verdict, attention can shift to the greater significance of the trial.

“While supporters of Pope Francis may argue that the results herald a new era of accountability in which no one is above the law, critics are likely to focus on issues of due process and the rule of law, including complaints, as Francis is the highest executive and judicial authority in the City of the Vatican state and a fair trial was impossible,” he wrote.

Allen also points out that Pope Francis intervened legislatively in this process with four rescripts by which he expanded and modified the law of the city-state of Vatican City, thus allowing the civil court to try also cardinals and prelates working for the Holy See and at the same time also expanded the competences of the Vatican prosecutor’s office.

Defense from the Vatican.

Even on the day of the judgment, a text from the editorial director of the Vatican media, Andrea Tornielli, appeared on the Vatican news website. In an article entitled The Vatican trial, which guaranteed all the rights,  the former journalist defends the trial of ten defendants.

“Despite the caricatures some have painted, the trial of the Sloane Avenue building investment and related cases was a fair trial conducted entirely in the courtroom with full respect for the defendants’ warranties,” Tornielli writes.

According to him, regulations on transparency, strict control over the management of financial resources, even by external administrators, and the knowledge that there are no prohibited zones will contribute to the fact that the management of church property will prevail, which will increasingly resemble the prudent management of good father families.

Tornielli claims that this process’s genesis tria observers showed that the Holy See and the Vatican City State have the necessary “antibodies” to detect alleged abuse or misconduct. “The course of the trial shows that justice is carried out without shortcuts, according to the rules, respecting the rights of each person and the presumption of innocence,” added Tornielli.

John Allen Jr. assesses Tornielli’s text as a response to the doubts expressed by many trial observers.

“Critics have argued from the start that the trial was fatally flawed, not only because some found the evidence inconclusive, but also because there is no separation of powers in the Vatican system between the executive and the judiciary, and Pope Francis has repeatedly used his powers in ways that he recorded the critics as an indictment,” said the American Vaticanist.

On the screen, the president of the Vatican tribunal, Giuseppe Pignatone, reads the verdict on Saturday, December 16, 2023. 

However, there have also been harsher reactions that connect Saturday’s verdict with criticism of the Argentine Pope.

Luis Badilla, a Chilean journalist living in Rome, on the Vatican blog Il Sismografo, openly called the process “totally unreliable.”

“The sentencing of Becciu is not the real, central issue. The problem is the tribunal subordinate to the monarch,” Badilla wrote. According to him, the whole process was only to serve the image of Pope Francis as a fighter against corruption.

Corriere della Sera Vaticanist Gian Guido Vecchi looked after the verdict at the overall atmosphere he believes reigns in the Vatican.

“Behind the Tiber, there is quiet resistance; in higher places, there is talk of an atmosphere of ‘rebellion’ that is ‘waiting for the end of the pontificate’ from the ‘fear of Bergoglio’s reactions,’ which is getting tougher and more decisive now that Benedict XVI is no longer here, who guaranteed a balance in the tension between Francis and his opponents,” said Vecchi.

Whatever the outcome of Cardinal Becciu’s trial in the appeals courts, the debate over the legitimacy of the Vatican’s civil judiciary will almost certainly continue.

Especially given that – as John Allen notes – Francis seems committed to what is called “Vaticanization” of the Holy See, meaning that the universal government of the church and its employees are subject to the laws and judgments of the Vatican City State.