Convicted cardinal Angelo Becciu lashes out at ‘demonisers’

Disgraced cardinal Angelo Becciu has accused media outlets of launching another ‘squalid media campaign to demonise’ him.

Angelo Becciu, right. Picture: AFP

Disgraced cardinal Angelo Becciu has accused media outlets of launching another “squalid media campaign to demonise” him, and says that he is particularly saddened that many Catholic news sites also “support such atrocities”.

In a pugnacious statement issued on the weekend, reported by the Italian newspaper, Il Giornale, the Sardinian prelate laments he has been the victim of “media violence” for more than four years and warns he has instructed his lawyers to “rebel and reject with disdain the vapid, infamous insinuations” against him.

“I have already sent to my lawyers instructions to intervene, making use of all provisions of the law, to protect my good name from anyone who continues to give substance to these overt lies.”

Becciu, who was sacked by the Pope in 2020 and in December was convicted of embezzlement by a Vatican tribunal and sentenced to five and a half years in jail – which he has said he will ­appeal – was responding to an article in The Australian reporting the battle for justice by Libero Milone, the Holy See auditor general who was dismissed without explanation in 2017.

Milone, who worked with ­George Pell on Francis’s campaign to clean up the Vatican’s muddy financial systems, had described his colleague’s death as “shrouded in mystery” and vowed to “get to the truth” of his own and his late deputy Ferruccio Panicco’s sacking and the subsequent derailing of reforms.

At the time of their departure, both men were detained for hours by Vatican gendarmes and threatened with criminal charges if they refused to sign resignation letters. They have spent five years trying to uncover the reasons for their removal and finally launched a €9m ($14.47m) wrongful dismissal lawsuit in 2022. Mr Milone said he still believes all those who worked to bring Vatican accounting systems into the 21st century had been “framed and eliminated” by those inside who had “things to hide”, and he is fighting for compensation for lost earnings and reputational damage also on behalf of his deceased colleague’s estate.

Former Vatican auditor general Libero Milone in Rome. Picture: Victor Sokolowicz

His statement led to others voicing publicly longstanding claims that Pell’s body had been found to have been treated with disrespect at the Vatican, confirmed on the weekend by his brother, David Pell.

However, Becciu said accusations that he pressured the two men were “false”, and he lamented he had been forced to deny the claims “to the point of boredom”.

“I only ever passed on, with an express and precise mandate to the auditor from the Holy Father, that he no longer had faith in him. I communicated this with calm and kindness.

“It is also false that I was behind the decision to abandon a PricewaterhouseCoopers audit reported in The Australian.

“If Dott. Milone believes this to be true, he should show me the letter on which my signature appears to do this. If he cannot, the affirmations are unjustified and shown to be false and defamatory. It is also grotesque to claim that I opposed his audience with the Pope. The Pope doesn’t need permission from anyone … ”

George Pell. Picture: Getty Images

Becciu acknowledged that he had had some “differences” with Pell but insisted these had nothing to do with financial reforms, saying his “so-called opposition to the changes were “invented” by those who had an interest in portraying him as “his enemy”.

“I had no title and no power in this … I received instructions solely from the Secretariat of State and the Pope,” he said.

“However I did make clear that despite their reforms, spending and outgoings of the Holy See showed no signs of decreasing … but if someone was opposing the changes, it was certainly not me.”

It is well known among senior Vatican officials that Pell both publicly and privately believed Becciu to have been a treacherous influence, and Pell had expressed no positive feelings toward Becciu beyond hoping that he received fair trial.