(s.m.) The Vatican media finally published the very strongly worded letter of protest from Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, in the early afternoon of Monday, November 11, once the go-ahead came from Pope Francis, its main target. But they did what they could to slip it by unnoticed.
Vatican News posted it to its home page — and only on the one in Italian — at the end of about twenty other news items, with nothing but the incomprehensible words “The right to defense” and a photo of the outer wall of the Vatican judicial offices. While L’Osservatore Romano did a bit more, with a little item on the front page that at least provided the name of the text’s author.
But almost no one reads L’Osservatore Romano anymore, not even news professionals. The fact is that none of the big international agencies reported on Becciu’s letter, nor any of the leading newspapers. The only one to do so, very briefly and after a delay of 20 hours, was SIR, the little agency of the Italian bishops’ conference.
The letter is reproduced below in its entirety, and can also be read in Italian and English on the respective web pages. And it marks the first foray into the open for Becciu — sentenced in the first instance to 5 years and 6 months of imprisonment — after the filing of the 700 pages of the reasons for the sentence, the publication of which was announced for December but previewed by the Vatican media on October 30 with an extensive report and a commentary editorial signed by Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the dicastery for communication.
So let us give the floor to the cardinal, still innocent in terms of the law and yet, as he writes, “considered guilty right from the first conversation with the pope on the subject.”
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THE RIGHT TO DEFENSE
(From L’Osservatore Romano of November 11, 2024, page 10)
Published as received.
During this trial, up to the sentence, I have appreciated the balance and precision of Vatican News in reporting on the proceedings that, regrettably, have concerned me. The hearings have been reported on in detail with a newsgathering effort that I cannot help but commend.
For this very reason I was surprised when I read the article by Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Dicastery for Communication, entitled “Fair trial and transparency,” also covered by L’Osservatore Romano. I certainly understand the need for the Vatican media to describe the trial, which also involved me among the defendants, as “a fair trial,” and I do not want to dispute this interpretation, although I may have reason to do so.
The sentence tries to answer the many arguments presented by my and other defense attorneys, yet it would suffice to read them without prejudice to realize that in some cases the right to defense, although formally guaranteed, has been put to a hard test and emptied of substance.
One might think that my arguments could be considered personal and dictated by emotion, perceived in public opinion as those of a cardinal, who once had great power, for the first time sent to trial — the first instance of which has been held — by decision of the Holy Father, and who for these reasons would be bitter and resentful that his actions should be scrutinized.
I need not recall the importance of the role of the substitute. He is the intermediary between the pope and the secretariat of state. He therefore has autonomy of management. His role is based on trust and on constant contact with the higher authority, invoked so many times in this trial. It is the substitute who must make the machinery work. It is to the substitute that everyone in the Vatican resorts, from the gendarmerie to the tribunal itself.
I realize that in some cases the actions of the substitute can be misunderstood, and I know that I have not been free from errors, as I believe has happened and happens to all those who, for years, manage a role with responsibilities so vast, delicate, and heterogeneous. But of one fact I am certain: I have always acted according to my prerogatives, without ever going beyond my powers and always with total fidelity to the Holy See. I explained this several times during the trial.
Tornielli emphasizes that the tribunal “gave a very broad faculty of intervention to the well-structured defenses of the defendants; it examined facts and documents without leaving anything out.” After reading the more than eight hundred pages of the sentence, I could object to the expression “without leaving anything out,” but, as mentioned, I prefer to refrain. The time will come to talk about the evidence in my favor, completely overlooked by the sentence, as well as the many other errors that emerge from reading the reasons.
On one aspect, however, I feel the need to express myself: the accusation that I defrauded the pope because, under the pretext of freeing a nun kidnapped in Mali, I allegedly had the Holy Father authorize me to use six hundred thousand euros, when in reality they were intended for a Ms. Cecilia Marogna with whom I supposedly had, even after learning of the accusations, “entirely friendly relations, if not downright familiarity.”
I am truly astonished, and I strongly reject this insinuation! If I had defrauded the pope I certainly would not be here shouting my innocence to the world! These statements are unacceptable and above all unsupported by any evidence!
I have always loyally served the Holy Father, and I conducted that painful initiative solely and exclusively to carry out the humanitarian operation agreed on with the pope, without any other purpose.
I come to the second part of the article, where it deals with “the use of money and the need to render an account,” taking it for granted that before now there was no accounting to anyone for investments while today there is. But this interpretation does not reflect the reality. Previously there was a system that provided for controls of a certain type; now there is a system that provides for other, different ones, perhaps more bureaucratic, not necessarily better. Previously there was an autonomy of management entrusted to the secretariat of state; now the secretariat of state no longer has the power to manage money, but this does not mean that there is no longer a center with decisional autonomy. It has simply moved elsewhere.
Tornielli even writes of “the sad story of the risky investment in Mincione’s fund of a good 200 million, an enormous sum for an operation that had no precedents.” The sum, I agree, was enormous. But it was used with the approval of the superior at the time and warmly supported by the office in charge of investments: first of all, by the head of the administrative office, whose position, as the sentence itself recalls, was shelved.
Moreover, that there were no precedents for such investments, in large real estate properties to be resold, is stated without any documentary support whatsoever. In this case too it would suffice to read the public documents — for example, the balance sheets of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See — to realize that such investments have existed ever since the Holy See equipped itself with a financial structure like that of today, following the Lateran Pacts. Tornielli goes so far as to maintain that it is “deleterious, for an institution like the Church, to adopt categories and conduct borrowed from speculative finance” because “these are attitudes that set aside the nature of the Church and its uniqueness.”
I am bound, with regret, not to comment on the vaguely moralistic tone of Tornielli, who deplores the fact that we have not behaved like “good fathers of the family” and goes so far as to write that “diversifying investments, considering risk, steering clear of favoritism, and above preventing money that is handled from being turned into an instrument of personal power, are lessons to be learned from the Sloane Avenue affair.” I will not comment, because I want to think that Tornielli is writing only in a generic manner, not referring to the undersigned or to particular defendants. And, above all, I would like to hope that the outcome of a criminal trial may not depend on attitudes or different sensibilities on the objectives of doing good.
Here is a bringing to trial of intentions. What we face is a criminal trial, not a trial aimed at imparting lessons. Now it is quite clear that an article like Tornielli’s considers me and all the defendants already definitively convicted. It is never written that the trial is in the first instance, that all the defendants have the right to appeal, and that therefore all of us, not I alone, are presumed innocent.
A person presumed innocent — may I be me permitted to write as to what concerns me — convicted of embezzlement, even though he did not receive any financial advantage whatsoever: neither for himself nor for his family, as the sentence itself has established. Which underlines that my defense, even outside the courtroom, has always claimed the proven absence of even the slightest personal economic advantage.
A person presumed innocent — I add — who was involved in the effort to help the Holy See to get out of the hole of a deficit that seems to have no end, and I am sure that it was not only on account of the Sloane Avenue investment, which was potentially an excellent investment.
A person presumed innocent — finally — who has lost everything, not in the name of the facts, but of an ideological perception of the facts. I would like there to be the intellectual honesty to recognize that this presumption has never existed. Right from the first conversation with the pope on the subject I have been considered guilty and pointed at in the newspapers as corrupt and even insulted. It seems that the political will is only to close the narrative on the trial, seeking not to damage the Holy See or the pope. It is a pity, however, that on this altar the truth must be sacrificed. But the truth, according to a saying attributed to Saint Augustine, is like a lion, and will defend itself unaided.
by Giovanni Angelo Becciu
Cardinal Deacon of San Lino
Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints
(Translated by Matthew Sherry: traduttore@hotmail.com)
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Sandro Magister is past “vaticanista” of the Italian weekly L’Espresso.
The latest articles in English of his blog Settimo Cielo are on this page.
But the full archive of Settimo Cielo in English, from 2017 to today, is accessible.
As is the complete index of the blog www.chiesa, which preceded it.
