Cardinal investigated for fraud recorded call with Pope Francis without consent

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An Italian cardinal investigated for financial crimes recorded, without consent, a telephone conversation with Pope Francis, in which he tried to induce the pontiff to confirm that he had approved confidential movements of money, according to the local press this Friday (25).

The audio has not been made public, but a hearing this Thursday (24) at the Vatican Court revealed the existence of the recording made by Cardinal Angelo Becciu, a former close adviser to Francis, in July last year.

The recording of the conversation took place as the pope recovered from intestinal surgery and three days before the start of Becciu’s trial – removed from office and stripped of his canonical privileges in September 2020, in the wake of a scandal over a real estate deal in London . The recording would have been made with the help of a family member of the cardinal, who was at his side.

At Thursday’s hearing, reporters had to leave the courtroom as the audio played, but lawyers present at the time said Becciu asked Francis to confirm that he had authorized a payment in order to help free a kidnapped nun in Mali.

“Did you or did you not give me authorization to start operations to free the nun?” asked Becciu, according to the transcript published, among other vehicles, by the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero. “We had set the ransom at €500,000 (R$2.81m), no more than that, because we thought it was immoral to give more money to the terrorists. I think I already informed you about all this. Remember?”

Francis would have replied that he vaguely remembered and asked the cardinal to send the question in writing.

In May of this year, at an earlier stage of the process, Becciu told the Vatican Court that Francis approved spending of up to €1 million (R$5.62 million) to free the missionary Gloria Cecilia Narvaez —kidnapped by the Malian jihadist movement, the Liberation Front from Macina in 2017 and released in 2021.

The case goes back to 2018, when Becciu was the third most powerful person in the Vatican hierarchy. At the time, he hired Cecilia Marogna, a self-described security analyst, to operate the rescue.

Marogna received €575,000 (R$3.23m) from the Secretariat of State, the Vatican’s most important department, from 2018 to 2019, when Becciu was in office. The money was sent to a company she founded in Slovenia.

Later, the police discovered that the analyst spent part of the funds for personal use, buying designer clothes and luxurious hotels. Marogna is a co-defendant in the process, accused of embezzling money.

This Thursday, Becciu faced the main source of the accusation, his former assistant, Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, in court.

Perlasca told the court how he was ordered to make payments he considered unusual: sending €100,000 (R$556,000) to a charity in Sardinia – not knowing at the time that it was connected to the cardinal’s family. Becciu claimed that the institution helped create jobs in a poor area.

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