What will come next? Does the Vatican have a prison? Can the Pope grant a pardon?

Which court will deal with the case of financial machinations next? Where would Cardinal Becciu go to sit if the verdict is confirmed?

“I want to shout to the world that I am innocent through the legal authorities and by all means,” Cardinal Angelo Becciu declared in mid-December after the first instance court in the Vatican sent him to prison for five and a half years.

In the Cinque Minuti show on Rai 1 television, the 75-year-old cardinal 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 do it,” added Becciu.

He appealed the verdict, and according to assumptions, the other eight co-defendants, who were found guilty by the Vatican City State Tribunal in a historic trial, mostly of economic crimes.

The court process is also groundbreaking in that for the first time the cardinal was convicted by lay judges. However, after the December judgment, several questions arose, which are also related to the specific system of the Vatican.

American Vaticanist John Allen Jr. after the verdict, summarized what the next procedure should look like.

The parties involved had only three days, including Sunday (which is a bit bizarre considering the Vatican) to file an appeal.

The appeal of Cardinal Becciu and the others will likely be heard by the Court of Appeal for the Vatican City State, which is made up of six judges – three clerics and three laymen. The chairman is the Spanish Archbishop Alejandro Arellano Cedillo, while the promoter of justice, i.e., the prosecutor, is the Italian lay lawyer Raffaele Coppola.

If the appeals court comes to different conclusions than the first-instance verdict, it is possible that the “supreme court” of the Vatican, known as the Court of Cassation of the Vatican City State, will also be asked for a decision.

It is currently headed by the American Cardinal Kevin Farrell and its members include Italian Cardinals Matteo Zuppi from Bologna, Paolo Lojudice from Siena, and Mauro Gambetti, Vicar General of the Vatican City State, along with two lay law

The Italian Vaticanist Andrea Gagliarducci points out that the second-degree proceedings in the Vatican are mainly of a documentary nature, the discussion itself is very small. “Since these are financial crimes, the last instance could be the European Court of Auditors in Luxembourg,” thinks the journalist ACI Stampa.

How does the Vatican want to enforce financial penalties? A rather interesting area concerns the intention of the Vatican Court, which as part of the judgment also ordered the confiscation of the assets of the defendants for about 180 million dollars and the payment of compensation for about 220 million dollars.

“If the Vatican wants to get its hands on some of this money, it will probably have to request that its verdicts be recognized by other states where these funds are deposited, such as Switzerland and the United Kingdom,” writes John Allen.

When it comes to applications to other courts, the Vatican tribunal’s record is varied.

In January 2022, a Swiss court rejected financier and defendant Raffaele Mincione’s appeal to unfreeze approximately $70 million worth of assets that had been frozen in 2021 at the request of the Vatican. At the same time, the court rejected Mincione’s claim that he did not receive a fair trial in the Vatican.

However, the Vatican was negative in the courts in Britain, reminds Allen.#In March 2021, a judge at Southwark Crown Court lifted the seizure of the assets of Italian financier and co-defendant Gianluigi Torzi, criticizing the Vatican’s submissions. In addition, proceedings are still ongoing in London on a claim for damage to reputation, filed by the aforementioned Raffaele Mincione against the Vatican Secretariat of State. In this case, a delicate issue arose – the British court granted Mincione’s request for access to confidential messages and e-mails between Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the two highest officials of the Secretariat of State.

By the way, the problem may not be only with the enforcement of the financial part of the punishment. As the AP noted, some of the defendants in the Vatican trial are located abroad, including one of the main characters of the trial, the financier Torzi. It is questionable how and whether other countries will extradite defendants to serve their possible sentences.

Will the cardinal sit behind bars? Even in the case of a valid conviction, Cardinal Becciu (and others) do not have to go to prison. From the recent past, we know of cases where the convicted did not finally start serving their sentence – thanks to the granted pardon.

In 2012, the former chamberlain of Benedict XVI was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Paolo Gabriele was the central figure in the Vatileaks I case. It was related to the publication of confidential documents that Gabriele brought out of the papal office. Benedict XVI, however, decided to pardon him.

The sentence of the same amount was also given to the Spanish priest Lucio Ángel Vallejo Baldo, who was convicted in 2016 in the Vatileaks II case. In this case, too, it was a question of bringing out confidential documents, which were subsequently published in their books by journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi. Pope Francis, however, is just like Benedict XVI. decided to grant a pardon.

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Does the Vatican have its prison?

There is no classical prison in the Vatican. Based on the Lateran Agreements, which were concluded between Italy and the Holy See in 1929, persons convicted in the Vatican can be sent to serve their sentences in one of the Italian prisons.

However, the barracks of the Vatican gendarmerie have several rooms used as pre-trial detention cells – with reinforced steel bars and doors, according to Reuters.

In addition to the butler Gabriele, the former archbishop and apostolic nuncio in the Dominican Republic, Józef Wesołowski, who was accused of using child prostitution and possessing child pornography, also spent several months there. He died before the trial began in 2015.

Much more often than prominent guests, petty pickpockets or vandals detained on the territory of the Vatican find themselves in these cells. They are then handed over to the Italian police or directly expelled from the country.

Who are the Vatican judges and how much do they earn? Let’s stop at the judges, which is also specific in the case of the Vatican. On December 4, 2023, just before the conclusion of the historic process, Pope Francis issued a motu proprio concerning the labor law matters of judges and prosecutors in the Vatican City State.

The ACI stamp approximates that Vatican judges and promoters of justice (prosecutors) work at the tribunal only part-time, despite the Council of Europe’s requirement that at least one of the members of the tribunal and promoters work full-time, i.e. fully devote themselves to the Vatican system. However, there is a kind of hybrid situation in the Vatican tribunal, where promoters of justice also work as lawyers in Italy, with former prosecutors turned judges in the Vatican.

The new motu proprio also deals with salaries and pensions.

The president of the tribunal and the promoter of justice have a monthly salary of 3,649.50 euros. The deputy president of the tribunal is entitled to 3,138.57 euros per month, while ordinary judges and members of the office of the promoter of justice are entitled to 2,919.60 euros per month.

“In practice, it does not matter that judges may have other jobs, the Vatican always considers them full-time judges, and therefore they are always guaranteed severance pay and a pension,” states Vaticanist Gagliarducci, adding that judges’ pensions are calculated at 80 percent of their last salary and is paid if the person has worked for at least 15 years.