Leo XIV and the “trial of the century”

It’s been called “the trial of the century” – a monicker or epithet it shares, not without some irony, with several other trials of the past two decades – but it has a claim to the title inasmuch as it represents the first time in history a cardinal faced charges tried in the ordinary criminal court of the Vatican City State.

In any case, the trial of Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu et al. certainly risks becoming one of the thorniest legacies left by Pope Francis. The appeallate phase of the trial opened last week, and has already produced two dramatic twists.

The case against Becciu concerns the management of funds under the purview of the Secretariat of State, where Becciu served for years under Francis as the Sostituto – basically the papal chief-of-staff – and includes a remarkable cast of co-defendants, about which we do not need to say much here.

The first twist of last week was that the Court of Appeal, presided over by Archbishop Alejandro Arellano Cedillo, granted the request for recusal of the Vatican Promoter of Justice (the Vatican City prosecutor). The request for recusal stems from the revelation last summer of a series of chats that showed how Monsignor Alberto Perlasca had been “assisted” (if not manipulated) in his testimony. Perlasca’s status as a key witness had been significantly downgraded in the ruling, even though it was his own reconstructions that formed the basis of the prosecution’s case.

The second twist was the court’s rejection of the the appeal from the Vatican Promoter of Justice, who had asked the court to overturn some verdicts of “not guilty” entered for some defendants on some charges, and to revisit penalties imposed for others. The appellate court ruled that the Promotor’s appeal had been filed with a procedural defect and outside the required timeframe, allowing the defense to argue its inadmissibility. The court accepted the defense’s argument.

The appeal process is continuing, of course, but it’s progressing at a slow pace. The Vatican Supreme Court will be called upon to decide on the recusal of the Promoter of Justice Alessandro Diddi, who has since suspended himself from the trial. The appeal will proceed only if the defense’s requests are accepted, which means the first-instance sentence cannot be worsened.

The two dramatic developments, however, also testify to a substantial shift in the Vatican climate. Pope Francis wanted the trial to be completed, even intervening with four rescripts to “facilitate” the investigation, and had complete confidence in the Vatican’s prosecutor. Three significant reforms of the Vatican judicial system under Pope Francis also strengthened the promoter’s position, even at the expense of a normal balance of power, considering that the promoter of justice is the same for the first instance and the appeal.

With Pope Francis, the tribunal would likely have been called upon to “invent” a formula to keep the prosecution’s case afloat, sidelining the defense’s requests.

This is no longer the case, as the attitude of Appeal Tribunal President Arellano also appears to be aimed at rebalancing the functioning of Vatican justice. In four days of hearings, Arellano didn’t just listen to the defense and allow these two dramatic developments to occur. He brought about, almost unnoticed, a substantial paradigm shift.

In the order announcing all the trial decisions, Arellano criticized the practice of citing or using examples from the jurisprudence of the “neighboring republic” (i.e., Italy) by both the defense and the Vatican’s promoter of justice. This position carries enormous weight, even if it cannot be weighed in the short term.

The trial over the management of the Secretariat of State’s funds wasn’t just a trial against a Vatican system. It was a trial rooted in an Italian concept of jurisprudence, with the addition of a moral connotation usually the province of canon law. Ultimately, the Promoter of Justice, Alessandro Diddi, was a lawyer in Italy, and all the lawyers in the trial had to contend with a legal system like the Vatican’s. The Vatican City State, in fact, adopted the Italian penal code. But it never accepted the most recent code, the Rocco Code, still in force, because that was a product of Fascism. Thus, when you enter the Vatican, the most recent codes date back to 1913, with procedures no longer used in Italy.

It’s a different state, among other things, with entirely different logic. But in this regard, it’s the Vatican court that must assert the force of national law (i.e., Vatican law) over that of the “neighboring Republic.” This hasn’t happened. Paradoxically, the pontificate of Pope Francis has witnessed a rapprochement with its cumbersome Italian neighbor. The agreement between Italy and the Holy See, which stipulates that Vatican employees would also pay taxes in Italy, dates back to 2015. This agreement undermined the sovereignty of the Holy See.

Even the Financial Information Authority, whose members had been internationalized, has returned to being managed by Italians from the ranks of the Bank of Italy. And, obviously, Vatican justice has never been more closely connected to Italian justice than when Giuseppe Pignatone was appointed president of the First Instance Court. At the same time, the tribunal’s members often held positions in Italy—Pope Francis’s latest reforms have also eliminated the requirement that at least one judge work exclusively for the Vatican.

Yet, many of the Holy See’s financial scandals originated in Italy or involve Italian cases that only tangentially affect the Holy See. The Vatileaks trials also originated in Italy.

In short, Arellano’s position represents a break with a trend that had been broken with great difficulty, at the cost of an unprecedented media campaign against it, and which had then returned with Pope Francis, accompanied by a media campaign that supported the Pope’s work against corruption.

Will this paradigm shift also affect Leo XIV’s pontificate?

Leo XIV has just made a first significant decision, thas is the appointment of Bishop Filippo Iannone as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops; he’s under enormous pressure, and many centers of power have strengthened and festered in Pope Francis’s final month. His interview for his biography wasn’t seen as an effective response to the accusations of a cover-up of abuse in Peru, even though the response to the allegations about his actions was precisely the basis for his decision to grant that interview.

The short version of a long and complicated story is that Leo XIV’s honeymoon with the media is coming to an end.

The dramatic developments in the Vatican trial could, in some way, rekindle anti-Vatican media campaigns that even target the Pope. Some signs of this have already emerged. For example, there is renewed debate over Pope Francis’s letters that allegedly led to Cardinal Becciu’s decision not to participate in the Conclave. The use of those letters, in reality, represents an attack on Cardinal Pietro Parolin, as well as indirect pressure on Leo XIV to begin changing the government team. And, to yield to pressure to introduce certain specific elements into his government team.

Meanwhile, the Vatican trial of the century is now becoming a minor issue, with an unclear impact on the fate of the current pontificate and even on the historical assessment of the previous one. Time will tell whether this will have any effect on Leo XIV’s decisions.