The lengthy document of nearly 800 pages details not only its December 2023 verdict on the sale of a Vatican-owned London property that resulted in losses to the Holy See of 200 million euros, but also other offenses that emerged during the so-called “Trial of the Century.”
The tribunal convicted Cardinal Becciu of three counts of embezzlement and sentenced him to five years and six months in prison. He was also fined 8,000 euros ($8,700) and permanently disqualified the cardinal from holding public office.
Five other defendants — Raffaele Mincione, Enrico Crasso, Gianluigi Torzi, Fabrizio Tirabassi and Cecilia Marogna — also received prison sentences of varying length.
Cardinal Becciu, who served in the important position of deputy Vatican secretary of state from 2011 to 2018, is appealing the verdict, and publication of the court’s judgment means his appeal can now proceed. Hearings are expected to begin in the new year and to last at least until the summer of 2025.
In the court document, the Vatican City State Tribunal, presided over by its president, Giuseppe Pignatone, reconstructs not just what happened from 2018, when the Holy See was hit by losses from the London property deal, but also 2012-2013, laying out a chain of financial crimes that exploited Holy See funds.
It describes the sale of the building in London’s Sloane Avenue as an “extremely risky operation incompatible with the always dutifully prudent attitude held by the investor.”
But above all, it highlights the crime of embezzlement, which, according to Vatican law, is the “illicit use” of money, regardless of whether there has been profit or not.
Cardinal Becciu always insisted no evidence existed that he profited from the deal, but the court judged that his authorization to invest in a fund owned by Mincione, and that was partly used to acquire a stake in the Sloane Avenue property, “certainly constitutes an ‘illicit use’ of those ecclesiastical public assets which the then Deputy Becciu had available due to his office.” It added that he was also “well aware” of the “legal limits” of using such funds.
The judgment states that the crime was “the desire to use the assets in conflict with the interests” of the Holy See. “It certainly cannot be denied,” it adds, “that the illicit use of the Church’s assets resulted in an obvious and significant advantage for Mincione and his associates as a direct consequence of the illicit conduct carried out” by Cardinal Becciu, “so it makes no difference that he did not intend to act for profit, nor that he did not obtain any advantage.”
The court also found that neither former Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, nor current secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin were ever involved in the affair, nor did they ever authorize it.
Cardinal Becciu was also convicted of embezzlement for arranging the transfer of 125,000 euros from Vatican funds to an account controlled by his brother Antonio Becciu, who runs a Catholic charity called the Spes Cooperative in Sardinia. During the trial, the cardinal admitted to transferring the funds into his brother’s personal account and insisted the practice was all above board.
The judgment says that neither the charity’s aims, nor the fact that that money was not actually spent, does not matter because “the central theme remains one and only one: the illegality of the donation, in particular made to one’s relatives.” Church property and funds cannot be given to relatives “without a special permission given in writing by the competent authority.”
The tribunal also found the cardinal culpable of failing to distance himself from Marogna, a geopolitical expert who, thanks to brokering by Cardinal Becciu, received more than half a million euros to free a nun kidnapped in Mali, but which Marogna then spent on luxury goods.
“Despite full awareness of the absolute gravity of the facts,” Cardinal Becciu “did not distance himself from Marogna even in the statements made as the defendant, in which he continued to support the woman’s professionalism and reliability without ever addressing the issue of the money she spent,” the judgment reads.
The Vatican sentenced Marogna to three years and nine months in prison.
Despite criticisms that the hearings, which began in July 2021 and concluded in December 2023, were carried out unfairly, the judgment also states that “the principles of due process have always been respected.”
The judgment states that the Vatican legal system “recognizes the principle of fair trial” and this is “not called into question.”