The Vatican announced on September 24 night that Cardinal Angelo Becciu (born 2 June 1948) had resigned from the rights extended to members of the College of Cardinals, but it did not specify which rights the cardinal had lost. Becciu was born in 1948 in Pattada (Sassari), Sardinia, Italy. Examining previous cases of cardinals who have renounced their rights can give some idea of what this means for Becciu, who is embroiled in allegations of financial malpractice, which he denied at a press conference on Sept. 25.
In the hour before, the Pope reportedly had been given an advance copy of a forthcoming news report on Becciu, his stewardship of Vatican finances, and new allegations that he used his position, and Church funds, to enrich his family.
Within an hour, the Holy See press office released a statement saying that the Pope had “accepted Becciu’s resignation” from his role as head of the Congregation for the Causes of Saint and his rights as a cardinal. Becciu, by all accounts, had not even made it back to his nearby, recently renovated extensively, apartment in the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio before the news was released.
Sudden “resignations” of this kind are not unknown at the Vatican – and Becciu himself has often been on the other side of the table, allegedly forcing, for example, the “resignation” of the Vatican’s first Auditor General, Libero Milone who was accused of “spying” on Becciu’s personal finances.
Like Milone, Becciu has since insisted that he did nothing wrong. Unlike Milone, who said Becciu threatened him with criminal prosecution if he did not leave his office quietly, the cardinal’s resignation marks a new beginning, rather than an end to his story.
After the news broke on September 24 evening, multiple Vatican sources told that both Vatican prosecutors and the Italian Guardia di Finanza are expected to lay criminal charges against Becciu. “I am innocent and I will prove it,” Becciu told an Italian newspaper. The odds seem good that he will be given his day in court to make the attempt.
As is well documented, Becciu has been linked to several financial embarrassments and scandals in the Vatican over the years, and it was apparently money that finally brought him down. We now know, thanks almost entirely to Becciu himself, that he was accused by Pope Francis of multiple offenses in a tense confrontation on September 24 Thursday afternoon, including diverting funds to companies owned by his brothers in deals for fixtures for the Vatican’s overseas embassies. He was also accused of donating Vatican funds to a charity in his native Sardinia run by another relative.
Of course, there’s a notoriously bad word for such deals, which is “nepotism.” Not knowing anyone else who could do the work is no excuse, because that’s what open bidding for contracts is all about. Clearly the operation wasn’t in the spirit of Pope Francis, who decreed a new law in early June specifying, among other things, that no one with a family relationship with a bidder for a Vatican contract can be involved in the decision.
The thing is, though, that tossing contracts to your relatives without any formal review or competitive bidding has been part of Italian business culture for so long, especially for men of Becciu’s generation, that he may be genuinely stupefied anyone would find fault. It would take a moral theologian to parse it all, but we could be looking at the difference between objective and subjective sin – if Becciu honestly didn’t believe there was anything wrong with what he was doing, then this could be what Aquinas called “invincible ignorance.”
However, among the multiple accusations lodged against Becciu over the years, no one’s ever suggested he’s a fool. If being the icon of the old guard means anything, it means taking the long view. Becciu knows that Popes come and go but the Vatican endures, and it’s possible that under a future papacy he could find himself in favour anew.
Becciu’s fall comes after nearly two years of reporting placing him at the centre of several different, overlapping Vatican financial scandals.
Before his role at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Becciu served as the sostituto at the Secretariat of State, operating as a kind of papal chief-of-staff and de facto manager of the daily operations of the curia’s most powerful department.
Under his stewardship, the secretariat engaged in a number of highly speculative financial ventures, including dealings with Swiss banks known for their lax approach to money laundering, and Becciu was alleged to be personally responsible for stymieing a number of attempts at financial transparency and reform.
The former head of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy, Cardinal George Pell, frequently found his efforts thwarted by Becciu. A source told that one occasion Becciu gave Pell – his superior – a formal “reprimand” for his attempts to bring transparency to the Secretariat of State. On another occasion, Becciu countermanded an audit of all Vatican finances ordered by Pell.
Since his vindication on sex abuse charges by the Australian High Court, Cardinal Pell had not commented on his former role, or the various financial scandals which have led to, from, and through Becciu’s office.
But after announcement that Becciu had “resigned” Pell issued a rare public statement, congratulating Pope Francis on what was in fact a summary sacking.
“The Holy Father was elected to clean up Vatican finances,” Pell said. “He plays a long game and is to be thanked and congratulated on recent developments.”
At the time of his election, Pope Francis was, indeed, widely hailed as a new broom that would sweep clean curial corruption. Since then, many have grown frustrated at the apparent lack of progress and the appointment, disappointment, and departure of reformers like Milone and Pell.
But while the Holy See has not officially acknowledged the reasons for Becciu’s departure, he has now become the first curial cardinal, at least in the modern era, to be dismissed for financial misconduct – something few would have predicted when Francis was elected in 2013.
While Becciu’s dismissal has taken many in the media by surprise, the drumbeat of reports in recent years has indicated that Vatican prosecutors were – at last – being given a free hand to pursue their work wherever it led.
In October 2019, several of Becciu’s former employees and closest collaborators at the Secretariat of State were the subject of a raid by investigators. By February, Becciu’s former deputy and effective right hand man, who had moved on to a position at the Vatican’s supreme court, was raided and suspended.
The arrest of Gianluigi Torzi, a key player in the London property deal that triggered the initial investigation into Becciu’s old department, was a major sign prosecutors were intent on bringing charges, not just filing reports.
Perhaps the most significant development came in July, when a search and seizure warrant was served on Italian businessman Rafaelle Mincione in a Roman hotel. That warrant was sought by Vatican prosecutors, but it was issued by an Italian magistrate and served by Italian state police, indicating that the investigation was sufficiently developed to convince Italian authorities to intervene.
But after generational attempts to bring order to Vatican finances, what makes this attempt different?
In addition to the spotlight which has fallen on Becciu and his collaborators over the last year, Vatican prosecutors have also had the unfortunate benefit of an acute cash crunch developing for the Holy See, exacerbated by the corona virus pandemic. Bluntly put: When there is less money around, it is harder to hide what is missing.
At the same time, Moneyval, the EU Commission’s anti-money laundering watchdog, has made repeated inspections of the Vatican’s financial institutions – with another progress report due out in the next few months. While they have expressed satisfaction with some of the financial structural reforms brought in under Pope Francis, they have repeatedly noted the Vatican’s poor record of prosecuting criminal financial behaviour, increasing the pressure on investigators to bring charges.