The Court of Appeal of the Vatican City State filed the judgment that rejects the claims brought by Libero Milone and the heirs of Ferruccio Panicco against the Secretariat of State of the Holy See. The suit revolved around the alleged invalidity of the two former auditors’ resignations, which they say were extorted through intimidatory methods carried out by certain executives of the Vatican Gendarmerie at the explicit request of the then Substitute for General Affairs, Angelo Becciu. That circumstance, moreover, was clumsily confirmed by Monsignor Angelo Becciu himself when he told the press: “If Milone had not resigned, we would have prosecuted him criminally.” A rather ham-fisted way of admitting he had coerced the former auditor into quitting.
Although the Tribunal acknowledged that Milone and Panicco did indeed have valid contracts and that their resignations occurred in questionable circumstances, the Court held that any abuses should be imputed directly to the individual members of the Gendarmerie concerned—persons who were not summoned to trial. In other words, the civil liability of the Secretariat of State was excluded because the contested acts were allegedly not formally ordered by it.
But how can one possibly assert such nonsense?
Continue reading at Silere