Vatican judges tell former auditor-general Libero Milone to drop ‘immoral’ misconduct evidence

Libero Milone, who worked closely with the late Cardinal George Pell in uncovering huge fraud in the Vatican, was told to drop ‘indecent’ evidence of misconduct by high-ranking officials.

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

In an extraordinary move, Vatican judges have told the Church’s former auditor-general, Libero Milone, who worked closely with the late Cardinal George Pell in uncovering hundreds of millions of euros of fraud, to drop evidence of “immoral and indecent’’ misconduct by high-ranking Vatican officials that could damage their “good name’’.

Pope Francis with Mr Milone.

Mr Milone’s lawyers presented the evidence, much of which is well established already, as part of his €9 million (AU$15.5m) termination case against the Vatican, after it ignored his attempts to reach an out-of-court settlement.

“The Vatican’s defence is absurd,’’ a senior Church official told The Australian from Rome on Thursday night Australian time. “What ‘good name’ are they referring to? On what planet do they live?

“Their own justice system accused and convicted several of their “good name” people, religious and lay, with whom Libero had to deal daily.

“Nowhere in the civilised world can such a thing happen without consequences.’’

One of the passages ordered to be removed from Mr Milone’s evidence was a confidential memo written in 2016 by Cardinal Pell, when he was prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy. The memo referred to “insurmountable hostility’’ at APSA towards adopting professional accounting standards to remedy practices that were “completely irregular and heavily damaging to the Holy See’’.

Mr Milone told The Australian he would not be withdrawing the evidence. If the Court of Appeal threw his case out when the hearing resumed on May 6 he would take his case to the Vatican’s highest court, the Vatican City’s Court of Cassation.

“I will fight on for the sake of my friend and colleague who died because his medical records were confiscated,’’ he said.

In July last year, Mr Milone told The Australian that the death of his former deputy, Ferruccio Panicco, a specialist forensic accountant who suffered from prostate cancer was hastened because Mr Panicco’s medical records were confiscated in a violent raid on Mr Milone’s office in June 2017. The absence of the records lead to a long delay in treatment.

When Vatican police raided the office unexpectedly confiscated electronic equipment, documents and forced open a safe with axes, crowbars, sledgehammers, chisels, and power-drills.

The raid occurred less than two weeks before Cardinal Pell returned to Australia to face false, historic child sexual abuse charges in Victoria, for which he spent more than 400 days in jail, before being cleared 7-nil by the High Court of Australia.

Mr Milone said the Vatican officials trying to stop his termination payout case “should read Animal Farm’’.

“They think they are superior to everyone else, a law unto themselves.’’

Vatican-based journalist Edward Pentin reported in the National Catholic Register on Thursday that the judges also told Mr Milone to withdraw evidence relating to a request by the auditor general to inspect the inventory of the Vatican’s holding of gold bars and coins. The request was met by the response that “the keys could not be found’’ although a Vatican Monsignor had told the media “everyone knew where the keys were’’.

Other evidence the judges want excluded relates to Cardinal Angelo Becciu’s role in cancelling the Vatican’s first external audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers and a 500,000 euro transfer from the Bambino Gesu Hospital for a “marketing campaign’’ that was intended for the financing of Italian political parties.