ROME — Vatican prosecutor has filed charges against an Italian Catholic journalist, accusing him of “defamation” of Pope Francis as well as divulging confidential documents.
Marco Felipe Perfetti, a conservative Catholic who writes the blog Silere Non Possum (“I cannot be silent”), has called the charges against him an attempt at “intimidation.”
“It is no secret that within the Vatican City State there is no protection of freedom of the press and the activity of Silere non possum has annoyed and continues to annoy those who have always acted to the detriment of this State and for their own personal interests,” the editors of the site wrote this week.
The site of the news outlet alleges that the Vatican initiated criminal proceedings against Marco Felipe Perfetti by communicating the charges to the press rather than to the interested party.
Perfetti has also noted that Silere non possum is managed by an Italian citizen and resident in the Italian Republic, and thus, the jurisdiction over him should fall to his place of residence rather than to the Vatican City State.
The Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano reported that in recent years, Silere non possum has become an important “point of reference for those who want to know secrets and affairs of the Holy See.”
Perfetti himself is a Roman lawyer with “many connections” within Vatican walls, the article stated, yet he has not yet received any official notification of the judicial process against him even though the hearing was to begin this week.
According to the popular U.S.-based Catholic news outlet The Pillar Catholic, in essence, “The man behind a well-known, well-read, and well-informed Church news website” has been charged with “doing journalism.”
The Vatican should hope that the charges do not stick, The Pillar added, since convicting a journalist of “disrespecting the pope and exposing dysfunction and scandal in the Diocese of Rome” is about “the worst possible countersign the Church could send in an era supposedly committed to transparency and accountability.”
This is not the first time the Vatican has threatened legal proceedings against what it sees as hostile journalists.
In 2018, the Vatican hired international law firm Baker McKenzie to force a small Spanish website called InfoVaticana.com to close its doors, allegedly for its occasional critical tone toward aspects of the Francis papacy.
The firm threatened a lawsuit if Infovaticana was not shut down and “its internet domain transferred to the Vatican.”