VATICAN CITY
Yahoo! News
By Angus MacKinnon
Vatican City (AFP) – Pietro Parolin, the most senior cardinal in the Vatican hierarchy, and two close associates of Pope Francis can be summoned to give evidence in a controversial trial of journalists and alleged whistleblowers, a judge ruled Monday.
Overruling objections from the Vatican prosecutor, the judge agreed to putting the Holy See’s Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, on the stand, as well as Francis confidantes Cardinal Santo Abril y Castello and Archbishop Konrad Krajewski.
The decision raises the prospect of the church’s dirty linen being laundered in public, with Parolin in particular likely to be quizzed over the bitter internal battle that has erupted in the hierarchy as vested interests resist Francis’s drive to clean up Holy See finances.
The senior clerics are to be summoned to give evidence on behalf of Francesca Chaouqui, a former PR consultant to the Vatican who is one of the five people accused of conspiring to leak classified documents that exposed out-of-control spending at the top of the church.
Chaouqui’s lawyer told a hearing on Monday that she wanted the senior clerics to testify in order to demonstrate that she was working “only in the interests of the pope.”
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