The news media loves the term “Trial of the Century.”
This phrase gained widespread acceptance and use during the 1935 trial that stemmed from the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s son three year earlier. That was in an era when newspapers and sensationalism went hand in hand.
The moniker came back in a more modern context when O.J. Simpson went on trial for double homicide in 1995 — a salute to the power of celebrity in American life, as well as debates about race. This era included both newspapers and TV (the trial was televised live), along with a nascent Internet that would eventually come to dominate the news landscape a few decades later.
Something akin to a Catholic “Trial of the Century” has gotten underway in Rome and there’s plenty of palace intrigue to go around. The trial involving corruption, bad real estate deals and financial wrongdoing has placed Pope Francis in the center of a controversy that for the first time doesn’t involve doctrine or theology.
Familiar journalism questions leap to mind: What did the pope know and when did he know it? What if a witness implicates Francis? Hold that thought.
Pope Francis may not be on trial, but he might as well be, as news coverage of this trial attempts to cut through all the noise and get readers what’s most important. Catholic media has done a very good job covering the trial, although I expect coverage to expand in the mainstream press should Francis become a central figure during testimony.
It’s moments such as this trial, delayed over the past year by preliminary hearings and COVID-19, that highlight the Vatican as both a religious institution as well as a political one, with all the headaches that come with managing a city state with immense wealth and properties. News coverage of this trial and its lead up has been interesting to dissect — depending on whether you read mainstream media or the Catholic press — and exactly what this latest scandal means for the church.
Last summer, Catholic News Agency wrote a very well done explainer on the trial that started in March. Here’s what they reported:
The trial is the result of a two-year investigation by Vatican prosecutors into allegations of financial malfeasance, mostly in connection with an investment made by the Secretariat of State in a London property.
According to prosecutors, during the Secretariat of State’s years-long purchase of the London building, people employed by the Vatican, or doing business with it, worked to defraud the city state for their own financial gain.
The prosecution has collected 500 pages of documentation and evidence it will present at trial. According to a summary by Vatican News, investigators claim the fraud involving the London property began when the building’s value was grossly overestimated in discussions with the Secretariat of State at 350 million pounds (around $483 million) – and the secretariat agreed to the purchase price.
It's not surprising that CNA did a piece on the people involved and the accusations made against them. After all, the Catholic press is no stranger to these type of in-depth coverage of the church.
NPR’s All Things Considered, meanwhile, delved into the subject best at the time from a secular press vantage point — and in audio form — focusing rightly on the process. NPR said the Vatican would be holding its “biggest criminal trial in modern history” during the three-minute piece.
Here’s a snippet from that July 2021 report where Sylvia Poggioli, NPR senior European correspondent based in Rome. This is what she said at the time:
Well, it was a really long hearing, almost eight hours. Twenty-seven lawyers representing the 10 defendants raised numerous objections. Some claim the Vatican court doesn't have jurisdiction over certain crimes, or they complained that they hadn't seen all the evidence or had been given sufficient time to study at all. It’s some 28,000 pages.
Now, what struck me was a kind of legal miscommunication between the defense and the Vatican prosecutors. The defense lawyers were citing Italian legal precedents that have nothing to do with the Vatican legal system. One lawyer, for example, claimed that recent decisions handed down by Pope Francis, which made this trial possible, such as lifting the cardinal’s immunity so he could stand trial, have made this according to a so-called sort of special tribunal you might see in an authoritarian regime. The prosecutors responded saying, hey; the Vatican is a separate state. It has a different legal system, and the pope himself is its legislator. So the trial was adjourned to October 5. It’s likely to go on for a very long time – many, many months, I'm sure.
The Vatican criminal trial includes 10 individual indicted by the Holy See, including the first cardinal to face a criminal trial in a Vatican courtroom. It also helps to know that he was once one of the Catholic church’s most powerful officials. Italian Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu faces charges of defrauding the Vatican.
To get specific, the case focuses on a London real-estate investment that prosecutors have said lost the Vatican millions while enriching middlemen.
This takes us to the present time. The trial is currently underway and press coverage has been intermittent. That’s not atypical of trials, especially one being held in a place where a vast majority of US-based news organizations do not have a correspondent. Trial coverage, in general, also fluctuates based on who is testifying, what prosecutors have said and whether any interesting documents — known as exhibits — have been made public.
In this case, however, there are several issues at play.
First of all, not every American newspaper has a Vatican correspondent who speaks fluent Italian and knows a thing of two about Vatican legal culture. That means reliance on wire services for stories. Second, this is a very complicated case and much of it of little or no interest to American readers. Thus, the Catholic press has been better at explaining the players and the process.
All of this changes — big time — if Pope Francis ends up being blamed for some of this. But for now, readers interested in digesting regular coverage have had to turn to an array of sources, both in the mainstream press and Catholic news outlets, to get the latest.
Two weeks ago, we got a dispatch from Vatican watcher John L. Allen, Jr., who edits Crux. Here was what he observed:
It’s been a rough week for the case against Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu and nine other defendants in the Vatican’s “Trial of the Century,” with challenges facing the prosecution both inside the courtroom and also more than 230 miles away.
On the inside, the court heard (and rejected) another due process complaint from defense attorneys this week, one which actually compared the current trial to the era of the Inquisition. It also heard testimony from one of the defendants that did not appear to bolster the prosecution case.
On the outside, the priests of a diocese in Becciu’s native Sardinia published an open letter referring to police raids last week in connection to one aspect of the charges as “absurd,” “unjustified,” and “specious.”
The case, however, continues to grind along, with Becciu himself set to testify next week on May 5.
Journalists and readers should circle that date on their calendars.
Expect plenty of news coverage stemming from that testimony given that the cardinal is the highest-profile defendant in the case. Again, another thing to watch for is what role, if any, did Pope Francis allegedly have in this imbroglio.
Regarding the pope’s involvement is something that came up at the trial just last week. This is what the Associated Press reported on April 27:
The former director of the Vatican’s financial watchdog agency testified Wednesday that Pope Francis asked him to help the Vatican secretariat of state get full control of a London property, once again putting the pope and his top deputies in the spotlight for their roles in the problematic deal.
Tommaso Di Ruzza is one of 10 people accused in the Vatican’s sprawling financial trial, which is centered on the secretariat of state’s 350 million euro investment in a luxury London property. Vatican prosecutors have accused brokers and Vatican officials of fleecing the Holy See of millions of euros in fees, much of it donations from the faithful, and then extorting the Vatican of 15 million euros to get full control of the property.
Di Ruzza, the former director of the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority, or AIF, is accused of abuse of office for allegedly failing to block the 15 million payment to broker Gianluigi Torzi and of allegedly failing to alert Vatican prosecutors to a seemingly suspicious deal.
Di Ruzza testified Wednesday that he had neither the authority to block the payment, nor the sufficient evidence at the time to flag it to Vatican prosecutors as suspicious under international norms or the Vatican’s own anti-money laundering laws.
He may have been referring to the Italian press, which covers the Vatican extensively given its proximity. The country’s many national newspapers have also given this trial extensive coverage.
Becciu could very well implicate Francis. What happens then?
Ed Condon, writing in The Pillar on April 19, addressed it this way:
Perhaps the most interesting consideration is whether Becciu will attempt to implicate Pope Francis in order to save himself.
“Taking sides against the family” might usually violate his personal code, but the situation has changed for Becciu. The cardinal might earnestly believe Pope Francis has left him holding the bag after his efforts to serve the pontiff went south. And if Becciu feels he has been betrayed, the next chapter of his courtroom drama might well be the most dramatic.
When he last appeared in court, on March 17, Becciu opened his appearance with a grand declaration of his “total willingness to seek and tell the truth.”
Condon (a veteran journalist and canon lawyer) added this observation:
But after the pope’s decision to lift the pontifical secret for Becciu, trial-watchers know the most complicated and potentially sensitive matters will be discussed when Becciu is back in the courtroom.
The cardinal’s sudden “scheduling conflict” has been seen around the courtroom as a sign that Becciu was surprised by Francis’ decision, and now needs several weeks to prepare before discussing subjects he believed he’d be excused from addressing directly.
How the cardinal chooses to answer them will hinge on personal, as much as strictly legal, considerations.
Back in March, the 73-year-old cardinal, in his defense, took the stand and declared his innocence to the Vatican judges who will decide his guilt or innocence. News coverage, lethargic at the moment in the secular press, would go into hyperdrive should Becciu, under oath and once questioned, blame this pope, a figure who overall gets favorable coverage in the American mainstream press.
It was in March that Becciu also attacked the news coverage — something he called a “media massacre.” Becciu was referring to the Italian press, which covers the Vatican very closely given its geographic proximity and religious-cultural ties. The country’s many national newspapers have also been covering this case and the trial. He was also blaming those in the Vatican who leaked information to those reporters.
Newspapers such as La Repubblica have covered the trial, but their archive also shows they were on the story, like many in the Italian press, for quite some time. It should be noted that the Italian magazine L’Espresso, known for its investigative reporting, was the one to break this story, forcing the pope to ask Becciu to resign as head of the Holy See’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints. At the time of the London deal, however, Becciu had served as the “sostituto” — or chief of staff — for the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.
It was that sudden resignation that L’Espresso was able to tie to financial scandal in its September 24, 2020, issue. The magazine had reported that funds from Peter’s Pence, a papal charity used to support the running of Vatican embassies around the world, had been used to in 2018 to purchase a stake in a property in London’s Chelsea neighborhood, which later incurred major debts.
Becciu, it should be noted, has denied that Peter’s Pence funds were used to purchase the London property, saying they instead came from a fund within the Secretariat of State.
Is Becciu the victim of a conspiracy? That’s tough to know. After all, the only reason Becciu is even on trial is because Pope Francis changed the law of the Vatican to sweep away special privileges that cardinals and bishops previously enjoyed regarding criminal offenses.
In the meantime, this is a case that will continue to pack lots of drama, but continues to be headlined by the question of whether Pope Francis was somehow involved and if Becciu is just a high-profile fall guy.
FIRST IMAGE: Photo of Pope Francis, during a recent appearance, courtesy of the Vatican press office.