Vatican Convicts 2 Over Leaks, Drops Case Against Journalists

By Francis X. Rocca
Wall Street Journal
July 7, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/vatican-convicts-2-in-leaks-case-clears-journalists-1467911871

Italian journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi, left, and Emiliano Fittipaldi leave Vatican City on Thursday. A Vatican court dropped charges against the two related to the publication of leaked documents while convicting two former Vatican officials in the case.

Francesca Chaouqui leaves Vatican City on Thursday. She received a suspended sentence of 10 months and five years of probation.

VATICAN CITY—A Vatican court ruled Thursday that it didn't have jurisdiction over two journalists accused of improperly obtaining confidential documents on corruption and mismanagement in the Vatican. But the same court convicted two former Vatican officials of providing those documents to the journalists for publication.

The judgment on the journalists, Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, addressed widespread complaints that the Vatican had been using their trial to muzzle press freedom. In reading the verdict, Giuseppe Dalla Torre, leader of the four-member panel of judges, said the court had taken into account the rights to freedom of thought and the press as recognized under Vatican law. The journalists’ alleged crimes didn’t take place on Vatican territory, and they weren’t Vatican officials, Mr. Dalla Torre said, explaining the lack of jurisdiction.

The verdicts concluded an eight-month trial that featured colorful testimony and the birth of a child to one of the defendants, while also highlighting the challenges that Pope Francis faces in reforming the Vatican’s bureaucracy and controlling its coverage by the press.

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The judges found Msgr. Ángel Vallejo Balda, a Spanish priest, and Francesca Chaouqui, an Italian public relations consultant, guilty of leaking confidential documents they had obtained while serving on a temporary panel established by the pope to advise him on administrative and financial reforms.

Msgr. Vallejo received a sentence of 18 months in prison and Ms. Chaouqui received a suspended sentence of 10 months plus five years of probation. Nicola Maio, Msgr. Vallejo’s assistant, was found not guilty of criminal collaboration.

Following the verdicts, the Vatican spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi, told Vatican Radio that the trial had been necessary to combat improper leaks of “tensions and polemics inside the Vatican” that could have “negative consequences for public opinion, which has the right to objective and serene information.” The spokesman quoted Pope Francis’ statement that such leaking is one the moral “diseases” afflicting Vatican officials.

Criminal trials are a rarity in Vatican City State, which has a two-cell jail. Convicts usually serve their time in Italian prisons, under an agreement with Italy.

The trial had been dubbed “Vatileaks II,” as if it were the sequel to the 2012 trial of Paolo Gabriele, butler to Pope Benedict XVI, who was convicted of leaking private correspondence that documented corruption, waste and mismanagement in the Vatican. Mr. Gabriele was pardoned by Pope Benedict after a brief imprisonment and then given a job in a Vatican-run hospital.

Mr. Nuzzi and Mr. Fittipaldi, writing separately in two books published last year, reported various instances of malfeasance, including the renovation of a cardinal’s luxury apartment using funds intended for a Vatican-run children’s hospital; and suspiciously large amounts of money handled, with little oversight, by those advocating for the canonization of candidates for sainthood.

During their trial, drama centered on the relationship between Msgr. Vallejo, 55, and Ms. Chaouqui, 34. At one point, the priest seemed to suggest that there had been a sexual relationship between them, which she subsequently denied in her own testimony. It was also revealed that she had sent him hostile text messages with references to his sexuality.

Msgr. Vallejo admitted giving confidential documents to Mr. Nuzzi. Ms. Chaouqui denied any wrongdoing.

At a sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Ms. Chaouqui’s lawyer conceded that her client could be “insufferable” but was not guilty of the crimes of which she was accused. In her own closing statement Wednesday, Ms. Chaouqui admitted that she was a “person who doesn’t know how to be quiet,” but said she had not intended to harm anyone or show disrespect to the court.

On Monday, Vatican prosecutors had asked for relatively harsh sentences of 45 months for Ms. Chaouqui, whom they blamed for “inspiring” the crime; 37 months for Msgr. Vallejo; and 21 months for Mr. Maio.

Underscoring that the real offense in the Vatican’s eyes was the leak rather than the publication, prosecutors had requested only a suspended sentence of one year for Mr. Nuzzi and nothing, on account of insufficient evidence, for Mr. Fittipaldi.

The two journalists had argued that they hoped to assist Pope Francis in his reform effort by documenting internal resistance to it.

In July 2013, four months after the election of Pope Francis, the Vatican made the leaking of confidential documents a crime punishable by up to eight years in prison. That November, following the arrests of Msgr. Vallejo and Ms. Chaouqui, the pope publicly denounced the theft of the documents as a “crime” and a “deplorable act.”