Former judge finds ‘no coincidence’ between Pell’s trial and Vatican sacking

A former Italian Constitutional Court judge has linked the 2017 sacking of the Vatican’s first auditor-general to the subsequent jailing of Cardinal George Pell in Australia.

Cardinal George Pell. Picture: CNS

A former Italian Constitutional Court judge, Romano Vaccarella, has linked the 2017 sacking of the Vatican’s first auditor-general to the charging of George Pell in Australia just 10 days later that led to his jailing, pointing the finger at the disgraced Cardinal Angelo Becciu who is on trial in the Vatican for financial fraud and embezzlement.

During the final hearing of a wrongful dismissal lawsuit filed by former auditor-general Libero Milone in Rome this week, Professor Vaccarella, one of Italy’s most senior jurists, described the timing of events as an inexplicable coincidence.

“On the 19th of June in 2017 they do away with Milone; on the 29th of June they eliminate Cardinal Pell who is thrown into prison. All this within 10 days … what a coincidence,” he told prosecutors.

“These are all documented facts; they have been written and rewritten, we have provided witnesses and we have offered the names of who should be interrogated – among them (Vatican Secretary of State Pietro) Parolin, with whom we have spoken ten thousand times and with whom we have had no fewer than 11 meetings.”

Pope Francis with the Vatican’s then auditor-general Libero Milone in 2016. Picture: Osservatore Romano / Reuters

Mr Milone, appointed by Pope Francis in 2015 as the Vatican’s first independent auditor-general, worked closely with Pell during his leadership of the Secretariat for the Economy, under orders to reform the Holy See’s antiquated and sclerotic financial systems.

However, in 2017, Milone and his deputy, Ferruccio Panicco, were suddenly marched out of their office by Vatican guards and forced to sign resignation letters after hours of detention.

Cardinal Becciu later insisted that they head stepped down voluntarily when threatened with criminal prosecution for “spying” on the financial affairs of Vatican curia, including his own.

Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu. Picture: AFP

After five years of futile attempts to negotiate privately with the Holy See, Mr Milone and Panicco filed a lawsuit seeking more than €9m ($15m) in damages for wrongful dismissal and damage to reputation.

Their pre-trial case was accompanied by a dossier of several hundred documents in which they argue – and provide evidence for – that they had been thrown out of office because they had unearthed a web of corruption and financial mismanagement involving officials at the very highest levels of the Holy See.

Both men, supported by Pell, believed the “old guard” within the curia to be behind the deliberate sabotaging of Pope Francis’s attempts to root out financial corruption and that the same faction had exploited Pell’s absence while he fought sex charges in Australia to jettison the reform program.

Panicco, whose widow was in court for the hearing, died earlier this year after a protracted battle with prostate cancer, exacerbated, his lawyers argue, by the seizing by Vatican guards of his private medical records. In a poignant note seen by The Australian in his legal submissions, lawyers state that Panicco, a practising Catholic, refused religious last rites.

Ferruccio Panicco.

Professor Vaccarella, acting for the two men this week, also appears to have won a significant concession from Vatican lawyers who have consistently denied responsibility for his sacking, arguing that because the auditor’s office was created by Pope Francis himself, it was his responsibility alone and therefore they could not be held liable.

The Vatican is in fact the only true or absolute monarchy left in Europe with the Pope empowered with complete executive, legislative and judicial power.

However, in their arguments for dismissing the lawsuit, the Vatican Secretariat’s lawyers appeared to accept that the former auditor-general did indeed have oversight of the secretariat’s financial affairs from the time of his appointment in 2015, thereby dramatically undermining Cardinal Becciu’s own defence argument.

Prosecutors have requested Cardinal Becciu be sentenced to seven years and three months in prison and fined €14m.