But do prosecutors really have a case against Becciu?

In his argument July 26, Alessandro Diddi spent the day focused on Becciu, the former sostituto of the secretariat, whose defense Diddi described as "masterpieces of falsification and mystification of reality."

The cardinal, in turn, has declared his "absolute innocence" and himself to be "a faithful servant of the Church" who has "suffered in silence" throughout a process he's called a witch hunt and media smear campaign.

Away from the courtroom hyperbole, though, there is perhaps one thing on which Becciu and Diddi would agree: The case is complicated.

According to the official charge sheet, he is accused of embezzlement and abuse of office, conspiracy, as well as the subornation of witnesses. But how does this break down, and does the evidence add up?

All roads lead through London

According to most media coverage of the trial, the primary focus of the evidence and the charges — including against Cardinal Becciu — is the Secretariat of State's now-infamous purchase of a London building at 60 Sloane Avenue.

But that story, however popular, isn't quite right.

The London deal may be at the center of the trial, but the charges, accusations, and evidence extend back years before the deal was concluded, and well into the months after.

The 2018 acquisition of the building by the secretariat was a messy affair, to put it mildly.

And it was the building's purchase which started the investigation which led to the current trial.

And it was the complicated structuring of the purchase which led to charges of extortion and other crimes for defendants, most notably the businessman Gianluigi Torzi.

But Cardinal Becciu has insisted that he had nothing to do with the purchase of the London building, and that the deal was done after he had left the Secretariat of State in June of 2018 and it was managed by his successor as sostituto, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra.

In that, Becciu has a point. He did not, so far as the available evidence shows, have anything to do with the decision to buy the building outright, or with approving the details which left the Vatican wide open to (alleged) fraud and extortion.

Still, that is only part of the story.

The purchase of the building — which lost the Vatican more than 100 million euros — was part of a hasty settlement as the secretariat severed ties with the financier Raffaele Mincione, with whom it had invested some 200 million euros in 2014.

That initial investment was approved by Becciu, as was its financing, and the unusual way it was recorded on Vatican balance sheets.

And those actions are part of the prosecution case — though the cardinal has insisted he cannot remember much of what he approved, or explain his reasons, even when presented with documents bearing his signature.

And as has been reported since before the trial began, when the newly created Secretariat for the Economy and Office of the Auditor General tried to look through the Secretariat of State's books for a curia-wide audit in 2015-16, it was Becciu who led the resistance to scrutiny.

According to reporting at the time — and later confirmed both by Cardinal George Pell, the first prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, and Libero Milone, the first auditor general — the secretariat under Becciu's leadership used forbidden accounting practices to effectively hide the whole 200 million euro investment with Mincione from auditors, along with the bank loans used to finance the investment.

Becciu has made several evolving claims in his own defense since.

He has said, at different times, that he never refused to cooperate with Pell and Milone; that Pell and Milone's departments never had the authority to audit the Secretariat of State anyway; and that he did act to shield the specific investments from scrutiny because they were some kind of secret discretionary papal fund outside of Vatican financial laws.

In addition to Pell (who died earlier this year) and Milone's insistence that none of these defenses are true, the plain text of the statutes of both their former departments — issued by Pope Francis — seems clearly to give them total access to and oversight of all Vatican departments and funds, with no exceptions. Read more

• Ed Condon is a co-founder and editor of The Pillar.
• First published in The Pillar.

After mass, she expressed her displeasure that Pope Francis had announced changes to the Code of Canon Law, lumping together the issues of child sexual abuse and women's ordination.

I had not read the changes nor the rationale for same. Hearing her characterization of the matter, I said, 'I can understand your frustration.' She promptly retorted, 'It's not frustration; it's anger. You have to understand how hard it is for us women to remain.'

Canon law has never been a favourite subject of mine. I thought I had better get up to speed.

In 1994, Pope John Paul II solemnly declared 'that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.'

In 1998, Pope John Paul II then amended the Code of Canon Law to provide that 'anyone who rejects propositions which are to be held definitively sets himself against the teaching of the Catholic Church'.

Anyone who obstinately rejected such a teaching and refused to retract when warned by their bishop was to be punished with a just penalty.

Pope Francis has now authorized a further change to the Code of Canon Law so that the obstinate non-retractor is to be punished with censure and deprivation of office. The canonical screws are being tightened.

Pope Francis has authorized a comprehensive re-write of Book VI of the Code of Canon Law which defines certain offences and sets down sanctions.

Quite rightly he has brought in a string of new offences against human life, dignity and liberty, dealing with child sexual abuse, grooming, pornography, and failing to report abuse.

He has also introduced a new suite of offences against the sacraments.

Until now the Code has dealt with those who are not ordained but who attempt to celebrate mass and those who purport to hear confessions though they are unable to give absolution.

The Code also had a more general provision providing for the punishment of an ineligible person pretending to administer a sacrament. Pope Francis has seen fit to move into the Code a provision (Canon 1379(3)):

'Both a person who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive the sacred order, incur a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; a cleric, moreover, may be punished by dismissal from the clerical state.'

Understandably this has left many people upset, including the woman who sang at my ordination 36 years ago.

Why is there any need for a further specific penal provision to be added at this time to the Code of Canon Law, and at the same time as the much needed overdue legal reforms dealing with child sexual abuse? Why not leave things as they were?

This new provision in the Code might not only deal with someone purporting to ordain a woman as priest. It could also apply to anyone purporting to confer diaconate on a woman, and the punishment would also apply to the woman seeking the conferral of the sacred order.

For many years, there has been discussion about two distinct matters: the theological possibility of women priests and the historical evidence for women deacons in various branches of the Catholic Church.

Back in 1988, Cardinal Ratzinger, as he then was, spoke at an event in New York where he agreed 'that the God of philosophy is neither male nor female, and the God of theology is both'.

He told the audience that the matter of women's ministry as deacons or priests was under study by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

For how much longer can we turn them away?

In 2002, after 28 years of consideration of the matter, the International Theological Commission could not come to a definitive answer on the historical reality of women deacons concluding that 'it pertains to the ministry of discernment which the Lord established in his Church to pronounce authoritatively on this question.' Whatever that means!

In 2016, the International Union of Superiors General asked Pope Francis to consider the possibility of women deacons in the contemporary Church. He set up a commission.

On 7 May 2019, Pope Francis was asked about the work of the commission during a press conference on a flight back to Rome. He said: 'The commission was created and has worked for almost two years. They were all different, all "toads from different wells".

They all thought differently, but they have worked together and have agreed to a certain extent.

But, each of them has their own vision that does not agree with that of the others. And there they have stopped as a commission and each one is studying how to move forward.'

He concluded his answer by saying, 'we have reached a point and now each of the members is studying according to their thesis. This is good. Varietas delectat. (Variety delights!)'

Some months later, the participants in the Special Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region voted 137 to 30 in favour of the Pope investigating further the possibility of women deacons.

In his final address to the Synod, Pope Francis indicated that he welcomed 'the request to reconvene the Commission and perhaps expand it with new members in order to continue to study the permanent diaconate that existed in the early Church'.

One of those who served on the 2016 commission is the highly respected American theologian Phyllis Zagano.

Prior to her appointment, she published an academic article on 'Women Deacons in the Maronite Church' stating, 'Without question, women were ordained as deacons in many Eastern churches, as copious research demonstrates.'

Since completing her term on the papal commission, she has published a book entitled Women: Icons of Christ.

She concedes that 'the Church teaches women cannot be ordained as priests'. But she then states correctly: 'it does not teach definitively that women cannot be ordained deacons.'

She reminds us that 'Phoebe is the only person in Scripture with the descriptor "deacon" and that Paul did not feminise her title to "deaconess".' She concludes: 'That women deacons existed cannot be denied, nor can their participation in sacramental ministry.'

What troubles her most is that 'Beneath every objection to restoring women to the ordained diaconate is the suggestion that women cannot image Christ.'

For her, this is not only a scandal: 'it is the disfigurement on the entire Body of Christ' and it 'is probably formally heretical'.

I quote her because she spent years researching this topic before being appointed to the papal commission. She expressed such views before her appointment, and she has consistently expressed them since.

We who are called to share the bread of life believe that Jesus had to be human so that we might be saved. Being human, he had to be either male or female. He could not be both.

That did not mean that only half humanity could be saved. Nor did it mean that only half humanity could be 'icons of Christ'.

Zagano demonstrates in her researches that women were ordained deacons in situations when there was a need for women to minister particularly to women and girls.

They were 'included in the order of deacon, not only in the early church but at least until the twelfth century in the West (and the East up to modern times)'.

Back in 2012, Zagano said, 'at some point, however, bishops are going to have to answer the question the International Theological Commission attempted to answer.'

Having reflected on the writings of Zagano, I now more readily understand why the woman who spoke to me after Mass a couple of weeks ago was not just frustrated. She was angry and rightly so.

The question about women deacons deserves an answer now. Not even Pope John Paul II claimed to have closed the door on that one. The matter has been crying out for the discernment called for by the International Theological Commission in 2002.

Having given up on his first commission of 'toads from different wells' and having only recently set up his second commission on the matter, surely Pope Francis could have told the canon lawyers to stay their hand when it came to instituting a specific new offence in canon law dealing with the purported ordination of a woman deacon.

The canon lawyers had more than enough on their plate with new offences dealing with child sexual abuse.

Zagano takes heart that the Vatican official explaining why the new canonical provision was not confined specifically to priestly ordination said, 'If we come to a different theological conclusion, we will modify the norm.'

During the week, we celebrated the feast of St Mary Magdalene who in the Byzantine Liturgy is called 'the apostle to the apostles'.

I recall the cartoon of the bearded apostles greeting the women with the words, 'So ladies, thanks for being the first to witness and report the resurrection and we'll take it from here.'

It's the women like the one who spoke to me after Mass who still front up each Sunday offering us five barley loaves and two fish. For how much longer can we turn them away?

The people are hungry for the Bread of Life, and it's not just the women. It's time for a discerned decision that reflects the delightful variety of the faithful.

• Frank Brennan SJ is Rector of Newman College, a residential college for undergraduates and postgraduates within the University of Melbourne. He is a human rights lawyer. His latest book is 'Observations on the Pell Proceedings', Connor Court, 2021.
• Published in La Croix. Republished with permission.

He says these reports emerged after he expressed anger at the court's 'perverse' guilty verdict, and are incorrect.

Initially he says he questioned his objectivity in the ongoing defence case for Pell, but decided not quit the legal team before Pell's appeal bid.

'It is false to say I quit the legal team, I don't quit,' Richter says.

Pell, 77, who is currently in custody awaiting sentencing after he was convicted of five counts of sexually assaulting two choir boys in St Patrick's Cathedral in the 1990s, is appealing his conviction.

Pell's solicitor Paul Galbally said it was rare for Richter, and many trial counsel, to continue to an appeal.

"As Cardinal Pell is well aware, Richter is still very much part of the legal team and will be involved right through to the end."

Sydney barrister Bret Walker SC will lead the case through the appeal process, with Richter, junior counsel Ruth Shann and Galbally remaining part of the defence team.

The matter has been filed in the Court of Appeal. It will be followed up after Pell is sentenced on March 13.

Future legal battles include two civil cases against Pell and others flagged since his conviction was made public last week after a suppression order imposed by the court last December was lifted.

The father of one of the boys abused by Pell in 1996 has indicated his intention to sue him.

Lawyers for another man who alleged Pell molested him at a St Joseph's Boys' Home pool in Ballarat in the mid-1970s are expecting to file a suit in the Victoria's Supreme Court later this week against Pell, the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne and others.

Prosecutors dropped the case against Pell in relation to that man's allegations late last year, and dropped all final charges against Pell last week, citing a lack of evidence.

Pell denies all allegations of abuse.

Source

• The Daily Mail
• Barossa Herald
• The Herald
• Image: The Australian

In reply, Pell says the Green Party's actions show it is "anti-religion".

A spokesperson for Pell said the move is really about political point scoring.

"The Greens have opted for an obvious political stunt while knowing full well Cardinal Pell has consistently co-operated with the Royal Commission and the Victorian police.

The suggestion that Cardinal Pell should be accountable for all the wrongdoings of Church personnel throughout Australia over many decades is not only unjust and completely fanciful but also acts to shield those in the Church who should be called to account for their failures."

The Green Party's Rachel Siewert launched the motion after acknowledging Australia's 4,444 alleged victims of clerical child sexual abuse.

In doing so, she noted "the allegations of criminal misconduct against Cardinal George Pell have been forwarded to the Victorian Office of Public Prosecutions by the Victoria police".

She then called for the cardinal to "return to Australia to assist Victorian police and the Office of Public Prosecutions with their investigations into these matters."

Source

• CathNewsUSA
• The Guardian
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Stay at home mum