In Vatican City, the defense in the Vatican’s “trial of the century” returned Tuesday to a central argument: Pope Francis’ involvement in the investigation, through what defense lawyers describe as unpublished “secret decrees,” should lead to the case being thrown out. Appeals hearings resumed after a three-month break, and the courtroom exchanges took on a tense tone as lawyers pursued a line of attack focused on what they said were the pope-signed authorities prosecutors relied on to investigate.
The case centers on Cardinal Angelo Becciu and eight other defendants who were convicted in 2023 of financial crimes after a sprawling two-year trial. Prosecutors had appealed the lower court’s handling, but the Vatican’s highest court of Cassation upheld the lower court’s decision to throw out the prosecutor’s appeal entirely, citing a procedural mistake by prosecutor Alessandro Diddi. On the same day as that Cassation ruling, Diddi resigned abruptly and after dropping months of objections, leaving the prosecution with additional momentum problems heading into the resumed appeals proceedings.
The appeals now proceed on a shift from earlier defenses that focused on behind-the-scenes conduct connected to the investigation, including discussions documented in WhatsApp chats that defense attorneys say undermine the trial’s credibility. The Tuesday session, however, focused on Francis’ role, with attorneys arguing that the secret executive decrees signed in 2019 and 2020 gave prosecutors powers that defense lawyers say were incompatible with the defendants’ right to legal protections—especially the principle that defendants must be able to respond to what the prosecution is authorized to do.
According to the defense presentation, the four decrees remained unpublished and were disclosed only right before the trial began. Defense lawyers said the decrees did not provide a rationale or time frame for surveillance, and they said prosecutors received broad powers—including the use of wiretapping and the ability to deviate from existing laws—without oversight by an independent judge. Legal scholars cited in the reporting argued that secrecy of the laws and their ad hoc nature violated a basic tenet of the right to a fair trial, including what is often described as “equality of arms” between prosecution and defense.
Attorney Mario Zanchetti made the argument directly to the appeals tribunal, contending that the entire trial should be annulled because of those secret decrees. Zanchetti’s client, broker Gianluigi Torzi, had cellphones and a laptop seized and was arrested and detained in Vatican barracks for 10 days without charge or what defense lawyers described as a judge’s warrant, with defense pointing to the wide-ranging powers granted by Francis’ decrees as the basis for that action. Zanchetti argued that laws must be published even in places like Iran and Russia, saying the failure to publish risks “making the Vatican’s procedural code fascist.”
At that point in the hearing, tribunal president Archbishop Alejandro Arellano Cedillo asked defense lawyers to avoid citing Pope Francis by name, according to the account of the session. The intervention underscored the courtroom’s unusual bind, with Arellano Cedillo’s request described as reflecting the “existential dilemma” for the Holy See: the idea that popes can only be judged by God, but also the prosecution case against defendants who, in defense arguments, claim that Francis’ role in the decrees violated the God-given rights of those on trial.
Defense attorneys also made the theme broader than Zanchetti’s individual complaint. Attorney Luigi Panella, in the hearing, described the decrees as giving prosecutors a “surreal carte blanche” to investigate. The reporting said that earlier, Diddi had argued that Francis’ decrees provided unspecified “guarantees” for suspects and that the tribunal originally rejected defense motions to nullify the trial on those grounds, ruling in a “convoluted” way that no violation of the principle of legality had occurred because Francis had made the laws.
Zanchetti, responding to the appeals court’s position, offered an alternative route for the tribunal to avoid a finding that he said would directly blame Francis, suggesting the judges could characterize the decrees as ineffective administrative acts because they were never published. Such a finding, the defense indicated, could make evidence gathered under the decrees inadmissible, allowing the tribunal to undercut the prosecution’s use of those authorities without a direct legal determination against Francis for violating rights, at least as described in the defense presentation.