Just when you think that the Vatican’s “trial of the century” against a cardinal and nine other defendants for various alleged financial crimes can’t get any more surreal, two developments pop out of the woodwork to prove you wrong.
A hearing Thursday produced both a previously unknown, and unauthorized, recording of a phone call with Pope Francis, as well as testimony from the prosecution’s star witness, who essentially blamed everyone in the system – both above him and below him, but not himself – for what went wrong.
Let’s begin with the phone call.
The recording apparently was made by a relative of Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu, one of the defendants in the trial, who’s facing charges related to transfers of Vatican money to a Catholic charity in his native Sardinia and also his financial dealings with a self-described lay security consultant named Cecilia Marogna.
Continue reading at Crux