VATICAN CITY
The Tablet (UK)
15 March 2016 | by Christopher Lamb in Rome
A priest has admitted giving confidential financial documents of the Holy See to journalists, but claimed he was not “fully lucid” when doing so.
Monsignor Angelo Lucio Vallejo Balda, who had sat on a top level papal commission overhauling Vatican finances and administration, was giving evidence in the so-called Vatileaks trial of five people, including two journalists.
The defendants, who face up to eight years in jail, are accused of breaking a Vatican law created by Pope Francis in 2013 criminalising leaking.
“Yes, I passed documents,” Mgr Vallejo Balda said under questioning yesterday. “I did it spontaneously, probably not fully lucid.”
He admitted to passing material to both Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi who both wrote books based on the documents, which revealed widespread financial mismanagement in the Vatican.
The 54-year-old Spanish priest said he gave Nuzzi – who made waves with the first Vatileaks scandal in 2012 – a five-page list of some 87 passwords to access the reform commission’s password-protected emails.
The priest claimed, however, that he was convinced Nuzzi already had access to the material.
Mgr Vallejo Balda also said he was under pressure from fellow defendant and member of the commission, Francesca Chaouqui, a 34-year-old PR expert.
He explained that he felt under pressure from Chaouqui who at one time he had been close to. He said he had felt “compromised” after she had once entered his hotel room in Florence. The relationship, however, turned sour and Mgr Vallejo Balda said she and her husband had sent him threatening text messages especially after the reform commission ended in 2015 and Chaouqui was left without work.
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