A Vatican tribunal today began deliberating the fate of five people, including two journalists, accused in the publication of confidential Vatican documents that exposed greed, mismanagement and corruption in the Holy See.
The journalists have denounced the Vatican for putting them on trial rather than the priests and laymen whose wrongdoing they uncovered, calling the trial a "farce" since prosecutors were accusing them of being part of a criminal conspiracy by their mere "availability" to receive information.
"Five-hundred pages of news about Vatican financial scandals, where not even one bit of news, not one page, not even a single line has been denied," journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi wrote on his Facebook page today.
"It's therefore a trial against the freedom of information."
The judges are expected to return a verdict within hours.
In a final, tearful statement, the woman at the heart of the scandal, Francesca Chaouqui, admitted she had made mistakes and that she has a strong, proud personality.
But Chaouqui, an Italian communications expert who was brought in to work on a Vatican reform panel, has denied that she ever passed confidential documents to journalists and vowed to go to jail with her newborn if convicted.
"If the court asks Italy to put this sentence into effect, we will pass our first years in jail," Chaouqui told the court, with baby Pietro in a side room with his father.
Chaouqui, a Vatican monsignor and his secretary are accused by the Vatican of forming a criminal organisation and leaking confidential documents.
They were part of a pontifical panel tasked with acquiring information about the Holy See's finances and proposing recommendations to make them more transparent and efficient.
Fittipaldi and Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi wrote blockbuster books last year based on the commission's documentation exposing the greed of bishops and cardinals angling for big apartments, the extraordinarily high costs of getting a saint made and the loss to the Holy See of millions of euros in rental income because of undervalued real estate.
Monsignor Lucio Vallejo Balda, the reform commission's No. 2, admitted in court that he gave Nuzzi 85 passwords to password-protected documents, but said he did so because he felt pressure to turn them over. He denied that the journalists themselves threatened or pressured him, and pointed the blame on Chaouqui.
