Five individuals were charged in a trial for the leaking and disseminating of confidential financial documents of Vatican and a Vatican official and a laywoman were sentenced for the crime in July 2016. Spanish monsignor Lucio Vallejo Balda was sentenced to 18 months after the controversial “Vatileaks II” trial of two investigative Italian journalists, a PR consultant, the monsignor himself and his assistant. He had already served half of his 18-months jail sentence when the Vatican announced December 20 that the Pope Francis had given Msgr. Vallejo Balda the "benefit of conditional release" and that the priest will now fall under the jurisdiction of his home diocese of Astorga, Spain. The journalists and assistant were acquitted, but PR expert Francesca Chaouqui, who was accused of orchestrating the leaks from a financial reform commission, was given a suspended sentence.
Pope Francis is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere and the first non-European pope since Syrian Gregory III, who died in 741. He has officially granted clemency to Msgr.l Vallejo Balda. The revelations at the center of the Vatileaks affair were embarrassing for the Church, but shortly after it started, the bigger scandal was the trial of Msgr. Vallejo Balda. It seems like the Church has scored a goal against the Church itself. The trial heard evidence about some cardinals’ luxurious tastes, as well as backstabbing and plotting within the Vatican.
Balda admitted leaking the classified documents but claimed he had only done so under pressure from his co-accused Chaouqui, after she supposedly made advances to him that culminated in a “compromising” encounter in a hotel room. Chaouqui denied those claims and even called Msgr. Vallejo Balda a delusional homosexual. He added back then that he had handed “87 passwords” over to a journalist at a time when he was being treated for depression and stress. Both Msgr. Vallejo Balda and Chaouqui are former members of the Commission for Reference on the Organization of the Economic Administrative Structure of the Holy See (COSEA).
There are even two books that came out in 2015 about Vatileaks scandal, which explains everything from stories of cardinals living in luxury apartments and the questionable use of charitable funds, to a complete lack of transparency into how tens of millions of euros are spent within important Vatican offices.
Photo Credits: Religion News Service
