The presiding judge read the verdict aloud on Saturday, December 16, 2023, and Cardinal Angelo Becciu was told he would go to prison for five and a half years.
The Vatican court, led by Giuseppe Pignatone, found the 75-year-old Italian guilty on several counts of embezzlement. He also received a permanent ban from public office and a fine of more than $8,000. Becciu, once the Pope’s chief of staff, is the highest-ranking Vatican official ever tried in the Vatican’s criminal court.
His lawyer, Fabio Viglione, told reporters outside that the cardinal “will certainly appeal.”
A trial of 86 sessions
The case, nicknamed the “Trial of the Century,” ran for nearly two and a half years and held 86 sessions. It centered on the Secretariat of State’s purchase of a London investment property for 350 million euros between 2014 and 2018. The Vatican argued the deal was flawed and built to cheat the Secretariat of State out of millions. Becciu, who once held the number two job there, faced charges of embezzlement, abuse of office, conspiracy and witness tampering. Prosecutors had asked for seven years and three months and a fine of 10,329 euros.
He has denied any wrongdoing from the start and says his successor at the Secretariat, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, ran the deal.
The other defendants
Five others were convicted. Fabrizio Tirabassi, a former Vatican employee, and Enrico Crasso, a financial consultant, each got seven years. René Brülhart and Tommaso Di Ruzza were fined less than $2,000 apiece. Lawyer Nicola Squillace drew a suspended sentence of one year and 10 months. Msgr. Mauro Carlino, a former Secretariat of State official, was acquitted.
The defendants all said their actions were above board and that Vatican authorities knew what was happening. Some pointed at people who surfaced in the investigation but were never charged. Defense lawyers called the investigation and trial chaotic and said it ignored human rights and due process, and one asked for a mistrial. Appeals are likely, since the case was the first in which lay judges tried a cardinal.
