The Vatican City Court of Appeal issued a decision Tuesday ordering a review of the investigation and indictment which opened the landmark financial crimes trial in 2022.
The March 17 decision clears the way for new litigation of the evidence and charges brought against nine people convicted by a Vatican court in 2024.
For almost as long as the Secretariat of State’s financial crimes trial has been going on, I have been simultaneously covering the repeated attempts by Libero Milone, the Vatican’s first auditor general, to sue the same Vatican department for wrongful dismissal.
The connective tissue of the two cases is, of course, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who as sostituto authorized the various fiscal shenanigans which led to the London property fiasco and much else besides, and was responsible in 2017 for having Milone detained by Vatican cops and forced to resign his post under threat of criminal prosecution.
That isn’t, to be clear, me editorializing, that was Becciu’s public statement on the event at the time, which he proudly owned, saying the auditor was “spying” on his financial affairs. Like, you know, the ones he now faces criminal charges over.
Anyway, Milone has been in a kind of Kafka-esque legal mirror world to Becciu as he attempts to clear his professional name.
As of this week’s ruling, Becciu’s lawyers have successfully got the appeal judges to agree that its a legal sine qua non for all the evidence to be made available in order for the trial to proceed.
Becciu’s lawyers have, again thanks to this week’s order, prevailed in overturning a direct, personal act of governance by the pope which was used, he’s argued, to his unfair detriment.
Milone has seen Becciu’s old department argue that, maybe, Becciu did coerce Milone’s resignation under threat of criminal prosecution for doing his job. But even if he did, since Milone was appointed by the pope, no one could fire him except with the pope’s permission, making it an unappealable papal act by implication.
Milone’s last appeal was rejected by Vatican City judges because, and I am not making this up, he didn’t sue Becciu first as an individual, rather than suing the Secretariat of State, for something Becciu did in office, using the powers of that office, which he then publicly said he did as an act of that office shortly before being promoted.
My point here is it’s great to say we need proper procedure, and protection of rights, and the constant vigilant pursuit of justice with balance and an eye for the common good and the credibility of the institutions.
I could not endorse all of that more strongly.
Just once, though, I’d like to see any of those noble principles brought to bear in a Vatican court when it’s a layman in front of the judges instead of a cardinal. You know what I mean?
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