ROME – A great deal of commentary has been unleashed by the recent denouement of the Vatican’s “Trial of the Century,” which ended with convictions for nine of ten defendants, including five years and six months in prison for Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu.
Amid the torrent of reaction, one of the more interesting voices belongs to Cataldo Intrieri, the lawyer who represented Fabrizio Tirabassi, a former official of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State who was sentenced to seven years and six months in jail for his role in the complex, and controversial, $400 million purchase of a London property.
In a Dec. 19 essay for Linkiesta, an online Italian daily, Intrieri asserted that despite the good will of the three judges who presided over the trial, “the standard of the investigation and of the trial itself remained far below that of a state based on the rule of law.”
Among other things, Intrieri pointed out that defense attorneys had wanted to question both Pope Francis and Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State, regarding their roles in the London affair, given that evidence suggests both were actively involved at key stages of the transactions. Those requests, however, were denied.
“If we consider that even in a state like Italy, institutional and government leaders have been questioned in various cases, we get a sense of how much ground has to be covered before we can talk about a ‘fair Vatican trial,’” he wrote.
Overall, Intrieri asserted that the trial amounted to an effort to criminalize what was really just bad judgment.
“It’s a question simply of poor administration and awful investments, for which there should have been a request for compensation in a civil case, but the popular and populist narrative required the theater of a penal process and an autodafé,” he said, invoking the memory of the Spanish Inquisition.
