ROME
The Australian
TOM KINGTON
THE TIMES
DECEMBER 2, 2015
A Spanish priest and a PR woman who are on trial for leaking Vatican secrets are engaged in a war of words amid accusations of seduction, sex and spying for the Italian secret services.
Francesca Chaouqui, a PR expert who was asked by the Pope to join a committee to monitor Vatican sleaze, said she was suing Father Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, her former fellow committee member, after he reportedly claimed she pushed him into having sex and boasted that she was a spy.
“Everything he has stated is false and I have sued him for defamation,” Ms Chaouqui said. “I doubt Father Vallejo Balda would have slept with me because he does not go for women.”
Ms Chaouqui, Father Vallejo Balda and his former assistant, Nicola Maio, face up to eight years in prison if they are convicted by a Vatican court. They are accused of leaking information about Vatican waste and mismanagement to two Italian investigative journalists. Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, who published the leaks, are also on trial. A hearing was adjourned for a week yesterday after Ms Chaouqui, 33, appointed a new lawyer.
The Italian newspaper La Repubblica published a statement from Father Vallejo Balda, 54, yesterday in which he claimed Ms Chaouqui pressured him into handing confidential documents to the journalists and that she made sexual advances.
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