Accused cardinal hits out at ‘monstrous and grotesque’ claims

Disgraced Angelo Becciu, accused of pocketing Vatican funds, has come out swinging.

Angelo Becciu has denied helping himself to Vatican funds. Picture: AFP

Angelo Becciu, the disgraced cardinal at the centre of a huge ­financial corruption trial, has come out fighting, describing ­allegations against him as “vulgar, monstrous and grotesque” and vowing to prove he never pocketed a cent of the Vatican’s funds.

Sacked by Pope Francis two years ago amid allegations of an array of financial crimes, Becciu is one of 10 defendants accused of money laundering, embezzlement and fraud in the wake of the controversial acquisition of a $400m building in London’s Chelsea.

The trial, which opened on Thursday before Giuseppe ­Pignatone, president of a three-judge tribunal, is being held in a large room inside the Vatican Museums because the usual courtrooms are too small to hold the enormous contingent of the defendant’s lawyers.

The Vatican is an independent state that operates its own ­system of justice.

The trial is hearing a variety of accusations, including that Becciu, as a senior prelate in the Secretariat of State, funnelled church funds to organisations and charities run by his family in his native island of Sardinia.

The 73-year-old is also at the heart of the mysterious, forced resignation of the Vatican’s first independent auditor-general, ­Libero Milone, who he accused of spying and subjected to nine hours of grilling by Vatican police.

Pope Francis addresses sacked Cardinal Angelo Becciu. Picture: AFP/Vatican Media

Milone had been appointed by Pope Francis in 2015 to conduct rigorous external audits of the church’s global funds and to work alongside Cardinal George Pell on a raft of reforms aimed at bringing Vatican finances into the 21st century.

One of the accusations Becciu faces is the unexplained transfer of $2.3m to the Melbourne office of a technology company now implicated in an investigation into Russian interference in the US election. Its timing coincided with Cardinal Pell’s trial and the money was at first said to have been for his legal defence, which was shown to be untrue.

As the first defendant to testify on Thursday, Becciu launched a ferocious attack, saying he was the victim of a “massacre” at the hands of the media and that the “insinuations” against him had “worldwide echoes”.

“I have been described as a corrupt man, greedy for money, concerned only about the welfare of my family … they have insinuated infamy about the integrity of my priestly life [saying] I have ­financed witnesses in a trial against colleagues … even ­accused me of owning oil wells and tax havens,” he told the court. “These are incredible accusations, absurd, grotesque, monstrous. I want the truth to be proclaimed as soon as possible.

“I owe it to my conscience, to my former collaborators, to all the men of the Curia and the ­ecclesiastical communities who knew me as the Pope’s delegate for the beatification of numerous servants of God in the many countries I have served during my diplomatic service.”

Hearings have been adjourned until the end of the month.