In an impromptu statement on Friday, Becciu said the highest level of secrecy was also agreed in consultation with the Holy Father in the Marogna affair. A meeting with the Vatican gendarmerie in 2020, which had previously been discussed in interviews with witnesses, was also strictly confidential; according to Becciu at the request of the Vatican police.
defense and counter-offensive
The cardinal also defended the transfers to his native Sardinian diocese. These were done legally according to the “law of love and selflessness”. Not a cent went into the pockets of his brother, head of the local cooperative Caritas Spes. At the same time, Becciu verbally assaulted the police commissioner, Stefano De Santis, and the main witness and plaintiff Alberto Perlasca.
He raised the question of why the transfers to the native diocese of Perlasca, in Como, had not been examined with the same meticulousness. The former administrator of the Vatican Secretariat of State plays a crucial role in the process.
Statements by the commissioner
De Santis had critically commented on Beccius’s relations with Marogna during the interrogation a few days earlier. According to the commissioner, Becciu knew immediately that Marogna would have stolen 600 thousand euros. And it was the cardinal who asked for silence in the 2020 meeting – for self-protection.
Furthermore, according to De Santis, there was no evidence that Marogna’s money had been used to ransom a kidnapped Colombian nun, as stated by Becciu. It was used only for Marogna’s private interests. De Santis had also presented as questionable the transfers to Sardinia to a “mixed account” of the local diocese.
Financial scandal in the Vatican
The focus of the trial relates to possible criminal offenses when buying property in London. According to the media, donations from the “Peterspfennig” papal collection were also used. The Vatican has now sold the property with a loss of around € 130 million, according to its own statements. In the case of the accused Cardinal Becciu, it is also a question of transfers of money to his diocese of origin in Sardinia.
In addition to him and Marogna, in the dock there are nine other former employees or agents of the Vatican. The charges against them range from embezzlement, corruption, extortion, money laundering, fraud through bribery and counterfeiting.
