VATICAN CITY
Catholic Register

BY JUNNO AROCHO ESTEVES, CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

April 13, 2016

An Italian journalist said he was given private documents by a Vatican official detailing problems with financial reforms and that he had a duty to publish them.

Testifying at his Vatican trial April 13, Gianluigi Nuzzi, author of Merchants in the Temple, denied pressuring Spanish Msgr. Lucio Vallejo Balda, secretary of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, for access to the documents.

Nuzzi and Italian journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi, author of Avarice, are accused by the Vatican of soliciting the documents and exercising pressure on the defendants, especially Vallejo Balda.

The monsignor, along with his former executive secretary and assistant, Nicola Maio, and Francesca Chaouqui, a member of the former Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See, are accused of “divulging news and documents concerning fundamental interests”…