From the start of the trial in July, attorneys for the 10 defendants in the case have lamented that evidence, including 53 DVDs of interrogations and wiretaps, gathered by investigators had not been turned over to the defence. In an earlier proceeding, the Vatican judges ordered that the entirety of the material be handed over by Nov 3 while disallowing other parts of the prosecutors' case.

On Wednesday, the defence said the Vatican prosecutors had not released a transcript of investigators' interview with Francis, who in Dec 2018 had a brief meeting at the Vatican with Gianluigi Torzi, the Italian broker who helped the Vatican complete the purchase of a luxury London apartment house. The deal eventually lost the Vatican some $200 million after Torzi allegedly charged the church exorbitantly for his interest in the company that owned the property.

A month earlier, Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, a former official at the Vatican Secretariat of State, had met with Torzi in London to sign two contracts with him. According to prosecutors, the documents were signed "before the issue was brought to the attention of the Secretary of State and the Holy Father."

The contracts gave Torzi 1,000 voting shares in the fund that owned the property. He later asked the Vatican to pay him roughly $17 million to relinquish the shares, an act that Vatican prosecutors now label as extortion.

Initially a suspect of the investigation, Perlasca later offered himself as a witness but prosecutors have not made his role in the trial clear.

While interrogating Perlasca on the contracts he signed and the pope's meeting with Torzi prosecutors referred to their interview with Francis, according to the defence. In a recording of Perlasca's interrogation that the defence played in court, the Vatican prosecutor can be heard saying that they "went to the Holy Father and asked him what happened."

"Monsignor Perlasca was confronted with the declarations made by the Holy Father," said Luigi Pannella, a lawyer for Enrico Crasso, a defendant who managed a significant portion of the Vatican's financial portfolio and is accused of money laundering, extortion and corruption.

According to Pannella, mention of the pope's statement led Perlasca, who "is a priest and tied to the Holy Father by a sacred relationship of obedience and subordination," to change his testimony. Lifting his laptop showing the recording above his head, the lawyer told the judges that Perlasca's face showed "supreme disconcertment" and "shock" upon hearing that his testimony differed from that of the pope.

Vatican prosecutor Alessandro Diddi denied that the pope's words had an effect on the case or Perlasca. "This office never heard the Holy Father on the record," Diddi said, charging that the monsignor was not shocked at the prospect of what the pope said, but "instead he paled when this office was able to refute his statement through documentation."

The prosecutor added that some of the material requested by the defence is still missing because it's part of ongoing investigations unconnected to the trial.

But since Francis was mentioned in Perlasca's interrogation, the defence teams insisted that the transcript of the pope's comments be added to the evidence. "The fact that these declarations by the Holy Father are missing in the data undermines the rights of defence," Panella said.

Throughout the trial, defence lawyers have tried to capitalize on the prosecution's withholding of evidence and what they say is a lack of due process, with some likening the trial to a kangaroo court.

The trial is a key turning point in Francis' attempts to clean up the Vatican's finances and introduce corporate standards of transparency. It is also the first time in memory that a cardinal of the church has been put on trial. Cardinal Angelo Becciu, once the third-highest-ranking prelate in the Vatican, is accused of corruption, money laundering and mishandling the institution's funds, including those collected for the pope's charitable works.

It was Becciu's lawyer, Fabio Viglione, who initially led the charge in Wednesday's proceedings, saying evidence handed over by the prosecutors is incomplete and, in some points, redacted. Viglione called the omissions "a mutilation of the evidence."

"The issue here remains the same," Viglione said. "We want to defend ourselves, and we want all the data and what we need to establish an effective defence." According to the lawyer, the persistent reluctance by prosecutors to relinquish the entirety of the evidence implies the "irreparable nullity" of the trial.

The Vatican judges decided to take time to reflect on the demands made by the defence lawyers and adjourned the trial to Dec 1.

First published By Claire Giangravé , Religion News Service

Republished with permission

Sources

Religion News Service

Reuters

The Vatican prosecutor offered to remedy the mistakes by essentially starting over, throwing the trial into question before it really got off the ground.

Deputy prosecutor Alessandro Diddi made the surprise announcement at the first hearing since the trial started in July, saying: "I feel the duty to meet (the defence requests) halfway."

Diddi said his office has always acted to ensure that the rights of the accused were respected. He suggested his proposal was a "common sense" way to address the defence objections.

Defence lawyers told the court Diddi's request was unacceptable and accused Diddi's office of withholding key pieces of evidence from them.

They cited a raft of what they claimed were procedural errors and asked court president Giuseppe Pignatone to annul the 500-page indictment. This action would effectively end the current trial.

The defence maintains the errors by the Vatican prosecution badly harmed their right to a fair trial and ability to mount a defence.

In particular, they want to view videos of five interrogations of Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, a former Vatican official who was first a suspect and then a star witness for the prosecution.

Perlasca is the primary witness against the most prominent defendant, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, a once-powerful Vatican official.

The prosecution has accused Becciu, other former Vatican officials or employees and outside middlemen involved in the deal of embezzlement, abuse of office, and fraud. They all have denied wrongdoing.

The trial revolves mainly around the purchase by the Vatican's Secretariat of State of a 350 million-euro investment in a London property.

The venture lost the Vatican tens of millions of euros. Much of the funds were donations from the faithful that were spent on fees to Italian brokers.

Pignatone adjourned the trial after about two hours and said he would announce his decisions on Wednesday morning.

If Pignatone agrees to Diddi's request, he and others on the prosecution team will return to their work with thousands of pages of evidence and documents. In addition, they will question some of the defendants again and other witnesses for the first time.

Sources

AP News

Reuters

Documents and computers were seized during the raid that focused on Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, a former top deputy in the Catholic Church's powerful Secretariat of State, according to a Vatican statement.

Perlasca serves on the influential managing board of several key financial departments in the Secretariat.

He helps oversee health care and pensions for Vatican employees, the operations of Catholic hospitals and the Ratzinger Foundation, which offers grants for theologians and is named for the emeritus pope.

He is also a magistrate in a Vatican tribunal

Tuesday's raid was the most recent phase of an investigation into the purchase of luxury London real estate.

The investigation involves suspected irregularities in the estimated $200 million purchase of a building in London's Chelsea district several years ago as an investment using Church funds.

Last year five Vatican employees were suspended during the investigation, the Vatican's police chief resigned and the former head of the Vatican's Financial Information Authority (AIF) departed.

So far Perlasca, 59, has not been reached for comment.

He is the sixth and highest ranking Vatican official to be implicated in the continuing scandal surrounding the Holy See's finances.

The official Vatican News website said Perlasca is suspected of embezzlement, abuse of office and corruption.

Pope Francis and other Vatican officials have defended using Church money for real estate investments as long as they are ethical.

Francis said last year Church money should not be "kept in a drawer".

Cardinal Angelo Becciu, also a former top official of the Secretariat of State, said the value of the London investment had tripled but that unspecified middlemen had behaved improperly.

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• Reuters
• Religion News Service
• Image: Crux Now