The Vatican’s “trial of the century”, which ended in December 2023
with guilty verdicts against Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu and eight
other defendants for financial crimes, is back in the news this week
following revelations in an Italian newspaper suggesting, according to
Becciu himself and lawyers for several other defendants, possible
prosecutorial misconduct and raising questions about the legitimacy of
the results.
The revelations concern a series of WhatsApp messages between two
individuals: Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, a colorful former PR
official and member of a papal commission who was convicted for passing
confidential documents to journalists in the 2015-2016 “Vatileaks 2.0”
case, and Genoveffa “Genevieve” Ciferri, a consecrated secular
Franciscan, a onetime consultant for the Italian security service, and a
longtime personal friend of Italian Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, a
former top aide to Becciu in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State who
turned into his accuser during the trial.
The fate of Perlasca, who had been a key architect of the
controversial $400 million London real estate deal which was at the
heart of the trial, but who was given a free pass by prosecutors in
exchange for his testimony, has long been a subject of controversy.
The fact that the two women had coached Perlasca in his testimony,
and had discussed doing so via Whatsapp, was well known during the
trial. It has been suggested that Chaouqui was driven by a personal
animus against Becciu, blaming him for using his position at the time as
the pope’s chief of staff to block a possible pardon by Pope Francis
after the Vatileaks trial, while Ciferri’s motive would have been to
help her friend Perlasca escape prosecution.
126 of the messages between the two women were entered into evidence
by lead Vatican prosecutor Alessandro Diddi, though he redacted 119 on
the grounds that they were pertinent to other ongoing investigations.
Defense lawyers appealed at the time, but to no avail.
During the trial, Diddi maintained that he had had no contact with
Chaouqui and Ciferii, and that ultimately the case against Becciu and
the other defendants rested primarily on hard proof and not the personal
recollections of Perlasca.
On Monday, the Italian newspaper Domani published a
front-page exposé claiming to have seen the complete exchange between
Chaouqui and Ciferri, not just the unedited 126 from the trial but
others in addition. All these texts, the newspaper reported, had been
obtained from Ciferri by lawyers for Raffaele Mincione, an Italian
businessman also convicted in the Vatican trial for alleged fraud.
According to the report, Mincione has deposited all the WhatsApp
messages, along with other materials, with the United Nations Special
Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers. That position is
currently held by Margaret Sattherwaite, an American professor of law at
New York University. Mincione is asking the Special Rapporteur to
denounce the Vatican trial for an absence of due process.
The exchanges quoted by Domani repeatedly appear to suggest
that Chaouqui had information about the Vatican investigation that could
only have come from Diddi’s office.
In August 2020, for instance, Chaouqui sent Ciferri a message
regarding what information Perlasca should put in a memorandum that
would be of interest to prosecutors, suggesting detailed knowledge of
the direction in which the investigation was heading. She also knew
several days in advance the precise date and time Perlasca would be
summoned for an interrogation.
In another instance, she had details of a famous dinner between Perlasca and Becci in at the Roman restaurant Lo Scarpone, on the Janiculum Hill, which theoretically should have been known only to Vatican police and prosecutors.
Later, in August 2021, Chaouqui not only appeared to know that
Perlasca’s personal accounts would be unblocked by investigators, but
she was able to give assurances as to when that step would be taken.
Even once the fact of their messages became an issue at trial, Chaouqui and Ciferri continued to write one another.
In one such message, which Becciu has touted as a smoking gun proving
a plot, she wrote to Ciferri: “We need to think about what you should
say [at trial], to avoid that the chats are considered trustworthy if
they ever decide to declassify them. Because if that happens, Becciu
would be right. For me, I’ll stick with what I said at the trial. I
don’t know Diddi. If it came out that we were all in agreement, it would
be the end.”
In response to the revelations, Becciu, who remains free pending his
appeal of the verdict, put out a statement Monday in which he professed
“deep dismay.”
“From the beginning, I spoke of a plot against me: An investigation
built on falsehoods, which five years ago unjustly devastated my life
and exposed me to a pillory of global proportions,” Becciu said. “Now,
finally, I hope that the time of deception has come to an end.”
Calling Chaouqui’s line about it “being the end” if collusion among
her, Ciferri, Perlasca and Diddi were ever established, Becciu wrote
that’s “more than eloquent.” He said he’s tasked his lawyers with
pursuing “every judicial action necessary” to bring possible
prosecutorial misconduct to light.
In the meantime, lawyers for at least three of the other defendants
in the trial have announced plans for their own appeals, styling the new
revelations as proof that their clients did not receive a fair trial.
So, what are we to make of all this? Three broad interpretations seem
possible, and I suspect we’re likely to hear some version of each in
the days to come.
The first is that these messages at least raise reasonable doubt
about the fairness of the trial and create issues that should be
examined by the Vatican’s own Court of Appeals as well as by other
judicial venues, such as the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur, which may be
petitioned to get involved.
From the beginning, Becciu has had his defenders, most of whom see
him as a scapegoat for a systemic failure in the Secretariat of State in
which both his former boss, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and his successor
as Parolin’s top aide, Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, are also
implicated.
According to this theory, the decision was made – according to some,
with the personal support of Pope Francis himself – to insulate Parolin
and Peña Parra by throwing Becciu under the bus, besmirching him by any
means necessary. Certainly these newly revealed chats will be used by
adherents of this view to bolster their case.
A second and opposing interpretation, which is likely to be the one
put forward by Diddi and his allies, is that there’s nothing wrong with a
prosecutor working with a witness such as Perlasca to prepare him or
her for trial. (Anyone who’s ever seen an episode of “Law and Order”
knows it happens all the time.) In terms of who Perlasca was talking to,
or being influenced by, Diddi will say he can’t control with whom a
witness communicates, and in any event, he’ll claim anew that, in the
end, Perlasca’s testimony was not the core of his case.
It will help Diddi’s position that to find him guilty of misconduct,
one would have to take at face value the word of the notoriously
flamboyant Chaouqui, whose own credibility repeatedly has been called
into question. (In her testimony at trial, Ciferri used a memorable
image to express this point. She said she had hesitated to tell Perlasca
that her advice was coming from Chaouqui, using the ruse of an “elderly
magistrate” instead, because she had heard that Chaouqui “is like
charcoal — whoever touches it gets dirty.”)
Finally, there’s a third possibility, which will be familiar to
Americans who followed the O.J. Simpson saga closely: To wit, it’s
possible Becciu was both framed and guilty.
That is to say, it’s at least theoretically possible that Becciu
actually committed the financial crimes with which he was charged, but
that overzealous prosecutors, unwilling to place their faith entirely in
objective evidence, also decided to collude with whomever was at hand,
including Chaouqui, in a campaign to see Becciu convicted by hook or by
crook.
Which of these three possibilities best fits the facts likely will be
the subject of much conversation, and consternation, in the days to
come. If nothing else, all this certainly ought to make Becciu’s appeals
hearing more interesting.
