'Vatileaks' trial due to end after nearly eight months

By Philip Pullella
Reuters
July 7, 2016

http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKCN0ZN00P

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Vatican judges retired on Thursday to consider their verdicts on five people accused of leaking or publishing confidential documents depicting a Vatican rife with corruption as a key defendant tearfully pleaded for mercy.

The four non-clerical judges presiding at the so-called "Vatileaks II" trial, which started in November, were expected to announce their decision later on Thursday.

It will mark the end of a sometimes bizarre trial whose main protagonists were a public relations expert, Francesca Chaouqui, who is Italian, and a Spanish priest, Angel Lucio Vallejo Balda.

In a final, rambling statement, a weeping Chaouqui, who had a baby three weeks ago, appealed to the court, saying she did not want her child "to spend the first years of his life in a jail."

Prosecutors were seeking a sentence of three years and nine months for her.

Chaouqui, Vallejo and his assistant Nicola Maio are accused of forming a criminal association and conspiracy to divulge private documents. Vallejo is the only non-Italian.

Chaouqui, who is married, is unlikely to serve any time even if convicted, legal experts say. The judges - all Italian citizens - were expected to take into consideration the fact that she has recently given birth.

Once colleagues in a now-defunct papal reform commission investigating Vatican finances, the past relationship between Chaouqui and Vallejo was at best ambiguous, and they spent most of the trial hurling insults and accusations at each other.

He claimed she was an ambitious and manipulative social climber who put him under a seductive spell and turned against him when she did not get a permanent position in the Vatican.

She sent him text messages with insulting, unpublishable references to his alleged homosexuality. He said she led him to believe she was a spy who could reveal secrets about his personal life if she did not get a prominent Vatican job.

In her final statement, Chaouqui accused Vallejo of lies and denied that she had ever been his lover. She apologised for some of the things she said during the trial.

TEARFUL RAGE

"I was full of rage. I can't hold back my tears. I never gave documents to journalists," she said.

The Vatican, the world's smallest state, has a two-cell jail. In line with bilateral agreements, those convicted in the Vatican can serve jail terms in Italy if the Vatican asks.

But most convictions of three years or less for minor crimes in Italy are effectively suspended due to prison overcrowding.

The Vatican made it a crime to disclose official documents in 2013 after a separate leaks scandal, which the media dubbed Vatileaks and which preceded the unexpected resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.

The two journalists among the five defendants - Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi - are accused of putting pressure on the other three to get the documents, which they published in two books last year.

Vallejo, blaming his confused state of mind, has admitted giving Nuzzi access to password-protected documents of the now-defunct Vatican advisory commission. The other four defendants have denied wrongdoing.

Prosecutors have asked for a sentence of three years and one month for Vallejo, and one year and nine months for Maio. They requested a one-year suspended sentence for Nuzzi and for charges to be dropped against Fittipaldi due to insufficient evidence.