Vatican scandal over leaked documents broadens to include Silvio Berlusconi's family, by Nick Squires, Telegraph (UK) (December 2, 2015)

Vatican scandal over leaked documents broadens to include Silvio Berlusconi's family

A Vatican scandal over leaked documents that has uncovered a murky web of sex, espionage and computer hacking has taken a new twist, with the alleged involvement of the family of Silvio Berlusconi.

Three Vatican officials are on trial for allegedly leaking confidential papal documents to two Italian investigative journalists, revealing subterfuge, waste and mismanagement at the heart of the Holy See.

One of the Vatican employees, a public relations executive named Francesca Chaouqui, is now accused of threatening Paolo Berlusconi, Silvio Berlusconi’s brother.

Paolo, the younger brother of the former prime minister, is the editor of Il Giornale, a Right-wing daily newspaper.

Mrs Chaouqui allegedly ordered him to rein in one of his journalists, who had written unflattering articles about her after she was appointed to a commission, set up by Pope Francis, to review the Vatican’s tangled finances.

She allegedly warned Paolo Berlusconi that unless he acted, she would put pressure Vatican authorities to investigate secret accounts allegedly held by the Berlusconi family at the Vatican bank.

The Berlusconi brothers denied that they had ever held accounts at the Vatican bank, formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion.

Niccolo Ghedini, their lawyer, said that Silvio Berlusconi had “never had any contact” with Mrs Chaouqui and had no connection with the scandal over the leaked Vatican documents.

Mr Ghedini said Paolo Berlusconi had met the public relations expert several times but purely in a social context and that the purported bank accounts were “non-existent”.

But prosecutors in Rome are investigating Paolo Berlusconi for failing to report the alleged extortion by Mrs Chaouqui, as is required under Italian law.

She has denied attempting to extort or blackmail him, saying they had “cordial” relations.

On Tuesday night, however, police raided the apartment in Rome that she shares with her husband, confiscating six boxes of documents as well as computers and mobile phones.

The alleged extortion attempt came to light from another scandal involving the Catholic Church – the shady sale of a 14th century castle in the town of Narni, Umbria.

Prosecutors are investigating alleged fraud and embezzlement in the sale of San Girolamo castle to the Church by the local council.

Mrs Chaouqui is on trial in the Vatican along with Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, a Spanish priest, and Nicola Maio, his former assistant.

Msgnr Vallejo Balda, 54, has claimed in a statement to his lawyers that despite his vows of celibacy he succumbed to a sexual relationship with Mrs Chaouqui, 33, and that he suspected she was working for the Italian intelligence services.

She has strenuously denied the priest’s claim that they slept together during a convention in Florence in Dec 2014.

“He brought along his mother and they were sleeping in the same room. How could we have gone to bed if his mother was there?” she told an Italian radio station.

The scandal has exposed the depth of resistance that Pope Francis has met as he tries to reform the Vatican’s finances and its governing body, the Curia.

“He has created a situation in the Vatican...in which centres of power have been demolished, and they have reacted. Discrediting me is just the start of their strategy,” Mrs Chaouqui said.

“The Pope’s reforms will never be secure while such strong forces remain.”

She denied leaking any documents. “I would rather die than betray the Pope,” she said.

The twists and turns of the scandal have made daily headlines in the Italian press, to the embarrassment of the Vatican, which was strongly criticised for its decision to put on trial the two journalists, Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi.

Both of them wrote books based on the documents they received and have insisted that by exposing malpractice in the Vatican they were serving the public interest.

Mrs Chaouqui said that the wrongdoing exposed by the books inside the Holy See “represents just 20 per cent of what the commission discovered” and warned that fresh scandals would emerge.

The five defendants are accused of endangering the security of the Vatican City State by leaking and publishing the papers.

It threatens to overshadow the Year of Mercy, a special calendar of religious events convened by Pope Francis, which begins on Tuesday. It is expected to attract millions of pilgrims to Rome throughout 2016.