ROME – The Vatican’s “trial of the century”, which ended in December 2023 with guilty verdicts against Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu and eight other defendants for financial crimes, is back in the news this week following revelations in an Italian newspaper suggesting, according to Becciu himself and lawyers for several other defendants, possible prosecutorial misconduct and raising questions about the legitimacy of the results.
The revelations concern a series of WhatsApp messages between two individuals: Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, a colorful former PR official and member of a papal commission who was convicted for passing confidential documents to journalists in the 2015-2016 “Vatileaks 2.0” case, and Genoveffa “Genevieve” Ciferri, a consecrated secular Franciscan, a onetime consultant for the Italian security service, and a longtime personal friend of Italian Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, a former top aide to Becciu in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State who turned into his accuser during the trial.
