Cardinal Angelo Becciu criticized the prosecutor’s case against him Thursday as the Vatican finance trial edged toward a close.

In a July 20 statement, Becciu said that Alessandro Diddi, the Vatican City State’s promoter of justice, had presented an account that he called “wholly far from reality.”

The former second highest-ranking official at the Vatican’s Secretariat of State insisted — as he has done since the trial began in July 2021 — that every single accusation made against him was false, “none excluded.”

The cardinal is accused of fraud, embezzlement, abuse of office, conspiracy, and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Becciu was speaking after Diddi opened two weeks of hearings July 18 to sum up the case against the 10 defendants in the trial, which centers on a luxury property deal in London, England, that the prosecutor said had lost the Vatican up to 189 million euros (around $212…