A fair and transparent trial

By Andrea Tornielli

Among the many considerations that arise in reading the long and complex reasons for the trial sentence regarding above all the sale of the London building on Sloane Avenue, I want to advance two in particular.

The first concerns the conduct of the trial, held in over 86 hearings in the Vatican Museums’ multi-purpose hall. Despite accusations and media statements about the rights of the defence not being guaranteed, the exact opposite is evident. The decision of the Tribunal led by President Giuseppe Pignatone did not follow the requests of the Promoter of Justice, as it re-qualified the crimes and acquitted some of the defendants for alleged offences. Above all, it placed cross-examination at the centre of the debate, gave the defendants a wide possibility of intervening with a well-structured defence,  and examined facts and documents without omitting anything. Even if the Vatican - like France and unlike Italy - maintains an inquisitorial system that differs from the adversarial one, and therefore does not offer the “principle of equality of arms” between the prosecution and the defence in the preliminary investigation phase, the trial phase is quite different. Here the principle has been fully guaranteed and a fair trial has been held with the right of defence and the presumption of innocence. Moreover, they are principles that are well defined and provided for in the current rules. It is interesting to note that, repeatedly, the reasons for the trial sentencing refer to certain judgments that have set the standard in Italian jurisprudence.

The second consideration concerns the use of money and the need for accountability. In the final document approved by the Synod on Synodality that concluded last week, there are paragraphs focusing on the issue of transparency, indicating that as a consequence of clericalism there is an implicit assumption “that those in authority in the Church should not be accountable for their actions and decisions.” The sad story of the risky investment in Raffaele Mincione's fund of no less than 200 million, a huge sum for an operation that was unprecedented - regardless of the responsibilities of the various subjects as ascertained by the Court - tells of a way of using money that did not involve “accountability.” And it also speaks of how deleterious it is for a reality like the Church to take on ways of operating and behaviour borrowed from speculative finance. These are attitudes that do not represent the nature of the Church and its distinctiveness. They are attitudes that set aside, or pretend not to know, that wisdom of the ‘good father of the family’ explicitly cited by the rules in force and all the more necessary when administering the goods that serve the mission of the Successor of Peter.

Diversifying investments, weighing risk, staying away from favouritism, and, above all, avoiding turning the money one manages into an instrument of personal power are lessons to be learned from the Sloane Avenue building affair.

It is a good thing that within the system itself of the Holy See, the ‘antibodies’ have developed that have made it possible to bring to light the facts that are the subject of the trial in the hopes that they will not be repeated.