VATICAN CITY
The Guardian
Rosie Scammell in Vatican City
Thursday 7 July 2016
A Vatican court has convicted a priest and a PR executive over their roles in leaking secret documents to two journalists, at the culmination of a trial during which scandal and intrigue returned to haunt the seat of the Roman Catholic church.
Eight months after the Vatican launched its case against five defendants caught up in the “Vatileaks II” scandal, only one – the Spanish monsignor Angel Lucio Vallejo Balda – will be heading for a jail cell in the city state.
Announcing their verdict on Thursday, judges ordered the priest to serve 18 months in prison for leaking confidential documents to the reporters Emiliano Fittipaldi and Gianluigi Nuzzi, who wrote books exposing the inner workings of the Vatican.
Francesca Chaouqui, an Italian public relations consultant, was handed a 10-month suspended sentence, and the court ruled it did not have jurisdiction over Fittipaldi and Nuzzi, who received the leaked documents on Italian rather than Vatican soil, and therefore could not convict them.
A fifth defendant, Nicola Maio, who worked as Balda’s assistant, was acquitted.
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