Gianluigi Nuzzi faced court over his last book (Vatican SpA) for leaking confidential Vatican documents.

His new book is called Original Sin: Secret Accounts, Hidden Truths, Blackmail and the Forces Blocking Pope Francis's Revolution.

The book will be released in Italy and France on 9 November.

Some of the documents reproduced in the book are said to come from the Vatican bank archives and the Institute for Religious Works.

The book is said to cover the period from Pope Paul VI in the 1960s to Pope Francis.

Nuzzi and fellow journalist Emmanuele Fittipaldi were tried in a Vatican court in 2015 after they published books based on leaked documents.

The documents exposed greed, mismanagement and corruption among the Church's senior clergy.

After an eight-month trial, the Vatican's criminal court said it had no jurisdiction to prosecute them.

It convicted Monsignor Angel Lucio Vallejo Balda, who was sentenced to 18 months, and public relations consultant Francesca Chaouqui, who was sentenced to 10 months.

Balda and Chaouqui were members of a dismantled Vatican commission set up to look into the Vatican's finances.

Chaouqui received a suspended sentence, while Vallejo Balda was granted "conditional freedom" by Pope Francis shortly before Christmas 2016.

Source

• Crux
• The Salt Lake Tribune
• Image: Chiarelettere

A Vatican court acquitted two Italian journalists whose books contained material from leaked confidential financial documents.

The court ruled it did not have jurisdiction over Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi.

But Msgr Lucio Vallejo Balda will get an 18 month prison sentence for leaking documents.

Francesca Chaouqui was given a 10 month suspended sentence.

The court decided her role was one of encouraging the leaks.

Prosecutors had earlier described her as the instigator of the leaks and had recommended a long jail sentence.

Msgr Balda's secretary, Nicola Maio, was acquitted at the conclusion of the trial which started last November.

The five defendants were being tried under a new law created by Pope Francis to criminalise leaking.

Breaking this law carries a maximum eight-year prison sentence.

Both Ms Chaouqui and Msgr Balda had been appointed by Pope Francis to serve on a high-level commission to overhaul the Vatican's finances.

Nuzzi's book, Merchants in the Temple, and Fittipaldi's book, Avarice, focused on the irregularities uncovered by the commission.

Widespread financial mismanagement inside the Holy See was revealed.

Also revealed were embarrassing details about the canonisation process, which costs up to €500,000 and the size of cardinals' apartments.

Msgr Balda, who has been under house arrest, is likely to serve his sentence in one of the handful of the Vatican's prison cells.

It has been speculated, however, that the Pope might pardon him during the Year of Mercy.

Sources

• The Tablet
• Catholic Herald
• Image: The Tablet

Francesca Chaouqui said this during testimony at the trial of five defendants, including herself, at the Vatican.

Ms Chaouqui, a public relations expert who used to work at the Vatican, wrote further about the matter on her Facebook page.

She was writing about Italian Archbishop Angelo Giovanni Becciu, the number two official at the Vatican's Secretariat of State.

Ms Chaouqui wrote that the archbishop has staked his credibility on her going to prison, so she'll be "condemned without evidence".

She also wrote that she's "not afraid of four feet of pure evil", in reference to Archbishop Becciu's diminutive height, and that she stands by her accusations.

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, stated in response: "It has become necessary — without desiring in any way to condition the action of the Court — to deny, in a most absolute way, such accusations and to state that, since they are calumnious affirmations, they are absolutely unacceptable, and subject to legal action".

Ms Chauoqui responded on Facebook that "the calumny and unacceptable thing is what the Vatican, in the figure of the substitute, is doing against me".

Archbishop Becciu's post is referred to as the "substitute" because he acts on behalf of the Cardinal Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

Ms Chaouqui wrote of a "dossier of lies" about her which, she stated, Archbishop Becciu received when she was hired by the Vatican three years ago.

She claimed the dossier was leaked to the press by the archbishop.

She also claimed Archbishop Becciu repeatedly called investigators during the questioning of her after her initial arrest nine months ago.

Last week, a police witness told the Vatican tribunal that, during questioning, Ms Chaouqui had admitted leaking confidential documents.

Ms Chaouqui, who is nine months pregnant, subsequently insisted she was not involved in leaking the documents.

Sources

• Crux
• Catholic World News
• Image: Crux

"I can assure you that no reserved documents ever passed from my hands," Chaouqui said. "Never, never," she during her testimony at the resumption of the trial that centered on the publication of two books based on leaked documents.

Chaouqui said she only gave journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi an invitation to a Vatican reception and a collection of newspaper clippings.

Nuzzi's book, "Merchants in the Temple," and Emiliano Fittipaldi's "Avarice" depict a Vatican plagued by financial irregularities.

Chaouqui is on trial along with Monsignor Vallejo Balda, Nicola Maio, the monsignor's former assistant, Nuzzi, and Fittipaldi.

Balda, Chaouqui, and Maio have been accused of "committing several illegal acts of divulging news and documents concerning fundamental interests of the Holy See."

Nuzzi and Fittipaldi were accused of "soliciting and exercising pressure, especially on Vallejo Balda, in order to obtain confidential documents and news."

Sources

ABC News
Catholic Herald
Daily Mail
Image: Catholic Herald

The trial has been adjourned for three months to enable computer experts to recover deleted email, text and WhatsApp messages between some of the accused.

Francesca Chaouqui, a pregnant former PR adviser to the Vatican and one of the accused, has been granted the right to call as witnesses Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, and Cardinal Santo Abril y Castello.

Chaouqui has been accused of conspiring with Spanish priest Lucio Vallejo Balda and his assistant Nicola Maio, to leak secret documents they had access to as members of a commission appointed by Pope Francis to spearhead a financial clean-up shortly after his election in 2013.

The two journalists on trial, Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, have published books based on the documents at the heart of the trial.

All five accused have been prosecuted under anti-leaks legislation, which could see them receive prison terms of between four and eight years.

The Vatican has been criticized by press freedom groups for pursuing the prosecution of the two journalists, who say they were only doing their jobs by revealing problems that believers and the broader public have a right to know about.

Sources

AFP/Yahoo News
The Irish Times
ANSA
Image: ANSA

Those indicted are Msgr Lucio Vallejo Balda, Francesca Chaouqui, Nicola Maio, Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi.

Balda and Chaouqui were both chosen by Pope Francis to be members of a commission to reform Vatican finances.

Maio is an assistant to Balda, and Nuzzi and Fittipaldi are both journalists.

A trial is set to begin on November 24 and will be open to the press.

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Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, 33, and Msgr Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, 54, were arrested by the Vatican Gendarmerie following an investigation.

Their arrests came days before the publication of two books about Vatican finances and associated scandals.

But while the priest was held in a Vatican prison, Dr Chaouqui was released after being detained for a day and a half, as she had reportedly begun to collaborate with the investigators.

Her detention was reportedly in a convent for women religious inside the Vatican, not in a jail cell, as other accounts reported.

America magazine has learned that her rapid release may be connected to the fact that she is two months pregnant.

America reported sources as saying that Pope Francis did not want Dr Chauoqui held in a prison because of her condition.

Dr Chaouqui reportedly asked Pope Francis to pray that she and her husband would have a child.

Msgr Vallejo Balda is in the same prison cell that was occupied by Benedict XVI's butler, Paolo Gabriele, 3 years ago.

After Dr Chaouqui's release, she has maintained her total innocence in conversations with journalists, and on Facebook and Twitter she stated: "I am not a mole. I have not betrayed the Pope. I never gave a page to anybody."

She blames Msgr Vallejo Balda for dragging her into all this.

Both were members of the Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Organisation of the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See (COSEA) set up by Pope Francis in July, 2013, but which is now defunct having completed its work.

The priest was secretary of that commission and she was one of its members.

Both had access to the confidential financial and organisational information that appears in the two books just published.

Since her release, Dr Chaouqui has been interrogated on at least one occasion by Vatican investigators.

A source close to Pope Francis told Italian newspaper La Stampa that "the Holy Father is saddened by the betrayal of the two disloyal collaborators".

On Sunday, Francis said the leaks were "deplorable act that does not help" and "a mistake", but added that he is continuing with reform.

Sources

• America
• The Times
• Vatican Insider
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Strettoweb

It said in a statement that the two had been interrogated over the weekend, and that Holy See prosecutors upheld the arrests.

The pair were identified as Francesca Chaouqui and Msgr Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda.

The monsignor is a Vatican employee and secretary of COSEA, the body set up in 2013 to advise the Pope over the reform of Vatican finances, which Chaouqui was also a member of.

A Vatican spokesman said Msgr Vallejo Balda was being held in a jail cell in Vatican City, and that Chaouqui was allowed to go free because she co-operated in the probe.

The arrests came after an investigation into the "misappropriation and disclosure of classified documents and information", the Vatican stated.

The arrests come just days out from the release of two books detailing alleged financial wrongdoing and mismanagement at the Vatican.

Gianluigi Nuzzi's book "Merchants in the Temple" is scheduled for release on November 5.

This comes in the wake of his 2012 blockbuster "His Holiness", from which the Vatileaks scandal ensued and after which Pope Benedict XVI's butler was convicted for leaking documents.

Publicity ahead of the launch states the book will set out the real reasons why Benedict resigned.

It also examines the funding required to get a saint named, misdirected charitable donations and the "black hole" of the Vatican's pension system.

Italian journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi is also releasing "Avarice: Documents Revealing Wealth, Scandals and Secrets of Francis' Church".

This book will map out the Church's financial empire, from the luxurious lives of the cardinals to the big businesses of Catholic-run hospitals in Italy.

The Vatican denounced the publication of the two books, stating: ". . . it is clear that this time too, just as in the past, they are the fruit of a serious betrayal of the Pope's trust".

Italian media reports at the weekend stated that Vatican police were investigating the attempted theft of a laptop belonging to Libero Milone, the head of the Vatican's new finance office.

Other reports spoke of the hacking of Mr Milone's computer.

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• AFP
• Associated Press
• Vatican Insider
• Image: CNN

Before securing the job, Chaouqui had extensively tweeted about Vatican affairs, often not mincing her words, giving rise to speculation that she had access to some degree of confidential information.

In a tweet in March Chaouqui described the Vatican's Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, as corrupt and claimed that he was involved in dubious business deals with an unnamed company from the Veneto region.

In other messages she fuelled speculations over Pope Benedict XVI's resignation, saying he was seriously ill, and claimed that former Italian finance minister Giulio Tremonti was a homosexual.

After the tweets were republished in Italian media, her account was deleted.

She claimed that other people had access to her Twitter account and claimed that images of her tweets that had been circulating were fabricated.

"I'm not worried because the Holy Father is not worried," she told Il Corriere della Sera newspaper.

She previously worked as management consultant with Ernst & Young in Rome.

Sources

International Business Times

The Wall Street Journal

NCR Online

Image: Facebook/IBN