ROME, Italy — Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, the former number three man in the Vatican, has been found guilty of three counts of embezzlement by a Vatican tribunal and sentenced to five and a half years of prison.
Writing for Vatican News, Andrea Tornielli said that “the long and onerous trial” was “the first of such significance and scope in the history of Vatican City State, that is from the time of the Lateran Treaty of 1929,” as it was the first criminal trial of a cardinal in a Vatican court.
In July 2021, a Vatican judge ordered Becciu and nine others to stand trial on charges of embezzlement, abuse of office, and bribery especially concerning the purchase and sale of a London luxury property on Sloane Avenue, over which the Vatican suffered a loss of more than 100 million euros.
Along with his prison sentence, Cardinal Becciu — who was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2018 — was banned in perpetuity from holding any public office and fined 8,000 euros by Judge Giuseppe Pignatone, who read out the verdicts on Saturday.
Cardinal Becciu was not alone in receiving a guilty verdict, as 9 other plaintiffs — both lay and clerical — were also found guilty of diverse charges of mismanagement of funds and embezzlement and the Logsic Humitarne Dejavnosti company was fined 40,000 euros and banned from contracting with public authorities for two years.
Along with abuse of office and embezzlement, Becciu had been charged with conspiracy and witness tampering for his attempt to silence leading prosecution witness, Msgr. Alberto Perlasca. Becciu’s prison sentence is barely less than the seven years three months requested by the prosecution.
The two and a half year trial revealed that Becciu had paid over half a million euros in Vatican money to “security consultant” Cecilia Marogna, owner of the Logsic Humitarne Dejavnosti, a portion of which she reportedly spent on luxury goods.
While Marogna and Becciu testified at trial that they were operating a secret, papally approved project to obtain the release of a kidnapped nun in Mali, the court determined the testimony to be “not corresponding to the truth.”
Marogna herself was also found guilty and sentenced to three years and nine months of prison time.
Becciu was also accused of diverting hundreds of thousands of euros in Church funds to members of his family — in direct contravention of Canon Law — including a 250,000 euro payment to accounts controlled by his brother, Antonino Becciu, who runs a Catholic charity in Sardinia.
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