In the long-awaited denouement of the Vatican’s “trial of the century,” which has been seen widely as a litmus test of Pope Francis’s press for reform, a Vatican tribunal on December 16 sentenced Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu to five years and six months in prison for his role in various financial crimes.
Becciu was also fined roughly $8,700 and permanently barred from holding any public office in the Vatican City State. An attorney representing Becciu immediately indicated plans for an appeal.
Becciu, 75, was already the first cardinal ever to stand trial on criminal charges before a Vatican civil court, and he now becomes the first ever to be convicted and sentenced. Prosecutors had asked for seven years and three months of prison time for the cardinal.
From 2011 to 2018 Becciu held the all-important position of sostituto, or “substitute,” in the Secretariat of State, making him effectively the pope’s chief of staff, the only figure in the Vatican system with the right to see the pope on a routine basis without an appointment.
Presiding judge Giuseppe Pignatone, a veteran Italian jurist, read the verdicts aloud on Decemebr 16 in a hall belonging to the Vatican Museums which was converted into a makeshift courtroom in order to accommodate not only public interest, but the sheer number of attorneys and support personnel necessary to try such a complex case.
Stretching over two and a half years, the trial featured 86 separate hearings and heard almost 70 witnesses, after what amounted to almost a year of procedural squabbles before the court ever got to the substance of the charges.