VATICAN CITY
U.S. News
By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The lawyer for a woman at the heart of a trial over leaks from the Vatican said Tuesday her client may not be likable, but that she shouldn’t be convicted just because she’s “unpleasant, insufferable, arrogant and presumptuous.”
Lawyers for the five defendants in the case began their closing arguments Tuesday after prosecutors rested their case. Prosecutors requested the stiffest sentence, three years and nine months, for Francesca Chaouqui, a communications expert who gave birth during the trial.
Chaouqui was a member of a papal reform commission investigating Vatican finances. She, the commission’s No. 2 and his secretary were accused of forming a criminal association and providing commission documents to two Italian journalists.
The journalists wrote books last year based on confidential documents exposing greed, mismanagement and corruption in the Vatican. They too were put on trial, accused of conspiracy and publishing confidential information — a crime under Vatican City State law.
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