Words: Harry Shukman
“He who enters the conclave as the Pope leaves it as a cardinal”, so the Vatican saying goes. Giovanni Angelo Becciu, a cardinal with access to the Holy See’s inner sanctum, who was even considered papabile – a popeable contender for the top job – must be turning those words over in his head now that his trial is underway for embezzlement, abuse of office, and inducing a witness to perjury. Cardinal Becciu has been stripped of his privileges – including his red biretta – but for now, he keeps his title. Where did it all go wrong?
The money, the power, and the secrecy of the Vatican operation have concocted some really delicious scandals since the early days of the Church. Pope Stephen VI, of the 9th Century, dug up his predecessor Pope Formosus and had his rotting corpse put on trial for blasphemy. Formosus’s lacklustre defence, as you may have guessed, led to a guilty verdict – his decaying blessing fingers were cut off, and his remains hurled into the Tiber. Pope John XII was accused of turning the Vatican into a brothel and was killed by one of the men he cuckolded, while Pope Benedict IX sold the papacy to another priest to pay off his election expenses. Pope Innocent VIII is said to have sustained himself on breast milk.
Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu has been stripped of his privileges amid a historic corruption trial
The Vatican, to judge by its more recent scandals, has not improved with age. Alois Hudal, a cardinal during the Second World War, helped some of the worst Nazi war criminals escape justice by spiriting them to South America and the Middle East. In 1982, Roberto Calvi, a top Italian banker who was closely associated with the Vatican, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London, with the evidence pointing towards the frightening conclusion that he could not have done it himself. That’s to say nothing of the child sex abuse revelations, orgies in cardinal’s homes, blackmail, backstabbing, intriguing, and corruption to come out in the last few years.
Every new fiasco dollops a fresh load of petrol onto the pagan bonfire at which there worships the unholy trinity of QAnon nutters, loyalist paramilitaries, and worst of all, Dan Brown fans. Then again, once you’ve read about the 2017 case of the cardinal who siphoned $500,000 in donations to a children’s hospital – a children’s hospital! – so that he could renovate his flat, you’ll probably start spotting all types of connections between Opus Dei, Hillary Clinton, and the reptilians who live under Denver airport. If sunlight is meant to be the disinfectant, there are plenty of corners in Vatican City that need a thorough scrubbing.
Pope Francis has deemed, for the first time, that a Cardinal should stand trial in a normal courtroom
Which is what makes Cardinal Becciu’s case particularly spicy. No cardinal in modern history has ever stood trial in a normal courtroom, raising the likelihood that some really filthy laundry is about to be aired in public. It used to be that cardinals could only be judged by their peers and not professional judges, but Pope Francis has changed the rules for Becciu’s trial. Beginning this week, and in hearings predicted to last months, Becciu will answer questions about whether he diddled Vatican funds, and redirected money meant for the poor towards his three brothers.
"Pope John Pope XII turned the Vatican into a Brothel, while Pope Innocent VIII sustained himself on breast milk..."
He will also face a grilling over his relationship with Cecilia Marogna, a 40-year-old Sardinian dubbed “the Cardinal’s lady” by the Italian media, who is accused of dipping into funds meant to free kidnapped priests and nuns abroad. Marogna has admitted spending – sorry, “investing” – hundreds of thousands of euros in designer handbags and shoes. After her arrest she denied that her relationship with His Eminence, Cardinal Becciu, was anything other than spiritual, claiming: “I, the lover of a cardinal? Absurd.” Marogna, who is one of ten defendants in this case, said Becciu enlisted her to dig up dirt on business rivals in exchange for €500,000.
Becciu, who has been described as the ex-de facto chief of staff to Pope Francis, was once in charge of the saintlier task of selecting candidates for beatification and canonisation, but from 2011 until 2018, he was the deputy at the Vatican’s secretariat of state, where he directed the Holy See’s investments. He will be quizzed about directing Vatican charitable donations into funding Rocketman, the Elton John biopic, and betting on the creditworthiness of Hertz, the car rental firm that went bankrupt last year. But the real explaining that Becciu will have to do concerns a complex property deal at 60 Sloane Avenue, a former car showroom run by Harrods on a fancy if unexciting street between South Ken and Sloane Square.
A big focus of the trial will be a shadowy Vatican investment into 60 Sloane Avenue on the Chelsea-Kensington borders
The building was purchased for €350m with a view to turning it into luxury flats. The Holy See has since painted the investment as a disaster, saying the building was purchased at a dodgily-inflated price that caused, according to a spokesperson, “substantial losses for the Vatican”.
Prosecutors say they will reveal “a rotten predatory and lucrative system, sometimes made possible thanks to limited but very effective internal collusion and connivance.” A puzzling network of financiers are also charged with embezzlement, fraud, and money laundering after allegedly masterminding a scheme that paid for the building through overseas funds and companies that led to their enrichment. These defendants are a gang that could only come from Italy: Raffaele Mincione, a playboy financier once engaged to Heather Mills and Fabrizio Tirabassi, a Vatican accountant who is accused of offering a call girl to thank a businessman on the property deal. Especially embarrassing for Pope Francis, who has long stressed the need for transparency, is that two of the defendants were once involved in regulating Vatican finances.
The infamous Chelsea Cloisters, known colloquially as ‘Ten Floors of Whores’
To the Vatican watchers, every detail that emerges from this trial will be scrutinised to see where it fits into their Da Vinci Code interpretation of the Holy See. Having said that, it is worth pointing out some curious connections. The property in question at 60 Sloane Avenue is opposite Chelsea Cloisters, a luxury tower block which the Sunday Times recently exposed as a popular destination for prostitutes and their clients, also known as “10 floors of whores” – a detail that might have been of interest to Tirabassi. And not to add grist to the conspiratorial mill, but it is a mildly interesting twist that Roberto Calvi’s last days, before he was found dead above the River Thames, his London address was… Chelsea Cloisters. How relevant you think these details are likely depends on how flat you think the earth is, but to the conspiracy theorists who think the Pope is somehow in league with Satan, it’s lively stuff.
"Prosecutors say they will reveal 'a rotten, predatory and lucrative system...'"
For his part, Becciu has denied all wrongdoing. “I am the victim of a plot,” he said. “I have been waiting for a long time to prove to the world my absolute innocence.” A few years ago, he told a newspaper that the Vatican is “not a den of thieves”, adding: “To represent it as such constitutes an absolute falsehood. I find it extremely unjust that our employees, proudly carrying out a service for the Pope and the Church, have gotten to the point, for some time now, of being ashamed to tell people they work here.” How true that statement is will be revealed over the course of the trial.
Read next: Sleazy does it: a gruesome history of Westminster scandal
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