ROME
Irish Times

Paddy Agnew in Rome

The ongoing Vatican City trial into the theft of confidential Holy See documents, popularly known as Vatileaks 2, took a sensational turn this morning when the Milan daily, Il Giorno, published a selection of “hot” text messages exchanged by two of the defendants, Spanish Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and Holy See lay consultant Francesca Chaouqui.

Msgr Balda (54), who works for the Vatican Prefecture of Economic Affairs, and 33-year-old PR consultant Ms Chaouqui, are arguably the two major defendants in the Vatileaks trial. Both of them are accused of having abused their position on Cosea, a short-term economic reform commission to which they were appointed by Pope Francis in 2013.

In essence, the Vatican prosecution argues that they leaked confidential documents from the commission, documents that ended up in two current Italian best-sellers, Greed by Emiliano Fittipaldi and Merchants of…