From Le Figaro with AFP
Published 25 minutes ago, updated 21 minutes ago
Cardinal Angelo Becciu. ALBERTO PIZZOLI / AFP
This former close friend of the Pope appeared alongside nine other defendants on fraud charges related to Holy See investments.
A Vatican criminal court handed down its verdict Saturday for 10 defendants, including senior Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu, charged with fraud, after two and a half years of an unprecedented trial surrounding the Holy See's financial operations. His Eminence Cardinal Angelo Becciu was sentenced to five and a half years in prison.
At 75, Pope Francis' former close adviser is the highest Catholic Church official to appear before the Vatican Criminal Court, the city-state's civil justice system.
Read alsoThe fall of Cardinal Angelo Becciu sends shivers through the Vatican
A case of massive fraud
At the heart of the proceedings: the purchase of a luxury building in London between 2014 and 2018 for 350 million euros as part of the investment activities of the Holy See, whose real estate assets are considerable.
The wide-ranging matter has reignited debate over the opacity of the Holy See's finances as Pope Francis seeks to clean up its operations since his election in 2013. He also reformed the judicial system so that bishops and cardinals could be judged by laypeople and no longer exclusively by their co-religionists.
The legal defender (prosecutor) Alessandro Diddi requested prison sentences ranging from almost four to more than 13 years, as well as financial sanctions, against the ten defendants who appear on charges of fraud, embezzlement, abuse of power, money laundering, corruption and extortion.
Bishop Becciu, the former number two in the Secretariat of State, the main body of the Holy See's central government at the heart of this transaction, retains his title of cardinal but was dismissed from all his functions in September 2020.