VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast
BARBIE LATZA NADEAU
Oh, what a tangled web of seedy deceit the latest Vatican leaks trial is turning out to be.
ROME—Sometimes Pope Francis must surely wish he had a magic wand instead of a shepherd’s staff.
That way he could just wave it and make the embarrassing Vatileaks II case go away. Instead, the trial against a monsignor, a public relations specialist, an administrative aide, and two journalists for leaking and publishing secret documents is raining sleaze on the pope’s Easter parade.
The trial, which has been on a hiatus for three months while experts determined what technical and computer evidence could be used against the defendants, kicked off this week with a bang. The hearing started Monday with Spanish monsignor Lucio Vallejo Balda, the only one of the five suspects in Vatican custody, on the witness stand.
Balda had been enjoying house arrest in Vatican City under the condition that he didn’t communicate with the outside world. Then, a few days before the trial reconvened, a sleuthing Vatican techie noticed that there was a spike in Wi-Fi usage from the wing where the monsignor was staying. Curious, the techie traced the Internet usage to a cellphone someone had smuggled in to the prelate, apparently inside a cutout in a religious book about the Franciscan order, according to the website Infovaticana, which is a sort of Drudge Report for Vatican watchers. Now Balda is back in a Vatican cell while the trial goes on.
When asked in court if he had leaked documents pertaining to his time on the Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Organization of the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See (COSEA) to journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, Balda admitted that he had, though he said he wasn’t “fully lucid” at the time. “Yes, I passed documents,” he told the court, explaining that he gave Nuzzi five emails and 87 passwords for documents related to the COSEA’s work. “I was convinced I was in a situation without exit.”
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