The crisis that threatened to poison the secret conclave of cardinals which elects new popes has been resolved. It looks certain that disgraced Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu – until 2018 number three in the Vatican hierarchy behind only the Secretary of State and the Holy Father himself – has fallen on his sword.
Many in the Vatican and the Catholic Church will have breathed a sigh of relief. Many others will be furious.
The crisis had threatened not only to dominate the general congregations of the cardinals this week but also to have a poisonous effect on the conclave itself
This morning Becciu announced – almost in tears it was said – his dramatic decision to ‘fare un passo indietro’ (take a step back) from his claim to be eligible to participate in the conclave. He made the announcement at today’s general congregation meeting of the cardinals. These preparatory meetings are held daily in the run-up to the conclave behind closed doors and are presided over by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Dean of the College of Cardinals.
Becciu did not give a reason but is expected to do so when he confirms in writing the withdrawal of his claim to eligibility, which is expected tomorrow. He declined to comment as he left the meeting and then switched off his mobile phone. There remains, given his choice of words, a slim chance he will return to the fray but it is highly unlikely.
Becciu had insisted he is eligible to participate in the conclave even though he was sentenced in 2023 by a Vatican court to five and half years in prison for embezzlement and banned from public office for life (a cardinal is not a public official).
Well before the verdict, Pope Francis had forced him to resign his rights as a cardinal in 2020 but confusingly allowed him to remain a cardinal and had even invited him to attend a meeting of the consistory, when popes seek the advice of cardinals.
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‘The cardinal insists he is eligible to vote and many cardinals agree with him but he has sacrificed himself for the good of the conclave and the good of the Church,’ Nico Spuntoni, vaticanologist and columnist for the Rome daily Il Tempo who knows Becciu well, tells me.
Until today’s dramatic volte-face, Becciu had looked certain to go down to the wire and force the cardinals to debate the issue and put it to a vote.
For several years, the Vatican had placed him on its list of cardinals as a ‘non elector’ and yet its press officer Matteo Bruni had repeatedly refused to explain why. Pope Francis, meanwhile, had never issued any document barring him from the conclave and without such a document, Vatican legal experts said, he could not be barred.
The crisis had threatened not only to dominate the general congregations of the cardinals this week causing rancour and disunity but also to have a poisonous effect on the conclave itself which the cardinals decided today will start on 7 May.
For if the cardinals had been forced to debate at length the issue and they then voted to bar Becciu from the conclave, many would have said the subsequent election of a new pope would have been invalid as a cardinal had wrongly been excluded. But if instead, they had voted today to allow him to take part, many others would have said that the election at the conclave would have likewise been invalid because it was contaminated.
Becciu has powerful enemies. And it looks like it was they who managed to torpedo his hopes of taking part in the conclave.
They include the now ex-Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin (Vatican heads of department lose their posts on the death of a pope) and Cardinal Kevin Farrell who Pope Francis appointed to be Camerlengo, who administers the Holy See during the interregnum.
Parolin is highly fancied to be elected the next Pope, with Ladbrokes giving him better odds than anyone else of 2/1. When Becciu was number three in the Vatican heirarchy – Substitute Secretary of State – Parolin was his boss.
Last Thursday, what seemed like a miracle occurred at that day’s general congregation at least from the point of view of Becciu’s enemies.
Parolin is said to have produced two letters, apparently signed by Pope Francis, which barred Becciu from taking part in the conclave. He is said to have shown them only to Becciu. If genuine, they would have demolished Becciu’s claim to be eligible to participate.
Nevertheless, he reacted defiantly by telling the press: ‘It will be my brothers who decide.’
The authenticity and validity of the letters were quickly challenged by experts and commentors. One is said to have been written some time in 2023 possibly in the wake of Becciu’s conviction, the other, either on 1 March or 23 March, the day Pope Francis was discharged from hospital, where he had spent over a month nearly dying of double pneumonia.
On Saturday, Spuntoni revealed in Il Tempo that the second letter was delivered to Cardinal Kevin Farrell by Pope Francis’s private secretary Juan Cruz Villalón. Spuntoni told me:
‘The letters were due to be presented today or tomorrow at the general congregation of the cardinals after which it was expected that the cardinals would have taken a vote on whether to bar Becciu or not. Not anymore’
Regarding the second letter Spuntoni tells me: ‘It is difficult to believe that the last Pope, either on 1 March when he was at death’s door in hospital or on 23 March, the day of his discharge when he was still very ill, would have been able to sign such documents voluntarily. Another possibility, of course, is that the letters are forgeries.’
The letters are said to have been signed only with the letter ‘F’ but minus the required Papal seal or stamp, and protocol number. This would mean they cannot be regarded as valid. Nor have they appeared in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the Vatican gazette, where all official papal documents and communications are published.
Certainly, Becciu claims to never have received notice of them prior to Thursday which is most bizarre since he is their subject.The March letter is said to have been addressed to Cardinal Farrell.
Regardless of all these doubts, it seems that it was these letters that persuaded Becciu to throw in the towel. They were shown to the cardinals at this morning’s general congregation and briefly studied by cardinals who are experts in canon law. It was after this that a tearful Becciu announced he was stepping back. He is said to have delivered a lengthy speech in which he set out the reasons why he was innocent of the crimes for which he was convicted, and how Pope Francis had never informed him that he had barred him from the conclave, before saying that he had to respect the will of the Pope. He must therefore have accepted that the letters were signed by Pope Francis even if they were technically invalid.
The whole murky affair leaves a very sour taste in the mouth.
Becciu became the first cardinal to be tried by the Vatican criminal court since it was founded in 1987 when he was convicted of embezzlement. The case against him sprang mainly from the Vatican’s disastrous £300 million investment in the former Harrods car showroom at 60 Sloane Avenue in Chelsea when he was Substitute Secretary of State and in charge of the deal.
He has always insisted that he is the victim of a plot by senior figures in the Vatican, determined to make him the fall guy for the Chelsea fiasco, in which the Vatican ended up selling the property for £186 million – a loss of £114 million. It is difficult not to conclude that if he is guilty, so surely are others. It is also difficult to understand quite what his crime was. It all seems more a question of massive Vatican incompetence.
The key prosecution witness was one of Becciu’s staff, Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, who had agreed to become a supergrass. The court accepted that Becciu had not personally gained any money from the fraud. Becciu appealed his five and half year sentence and life ban from public office and his sentence was deferred.
This means, as he has appealed, he is still innocent – another fact that the cardinals would have borne in mind if called to examine his case. In the Vatican, as in Italy, there are three grades of justice and until all three are extinguished a defendant is innocent – the trail, the appeal (effectively a second trial), and the final appeal to the Corte di Cassazione (supreme court) but only on points of law, not evidence.
Many observers believe Becciu is the victim of a grave miscarriage of justice.
Vittorio Feltri veteran journalist and founder of the right-wing daily newspaper Libero, wrote on Saturday, ‘I know’ Becciu is the victim of ‘a sacred scam’.
‘I also know that once a Pope is deceased, during the sede vacante (interregnum), it is the College of Cardinals that governs, and it being a little difficult to interrogate a dead Pontiff, they know they can correct errors that others induced him to make through their deceit.’
If all this had been debated by the cardinals at the general congregation today or tomorrow, and if the authenticity and validity of the two letters had been put under the microscope, it is far from certain they would have voted to bar Becciu. There are many cardinals who support him and these include Battista Re, the Dean of the College of Cardinals.
Only the 133 cardinals out of the total 252, those under the age of 80, can vote at the conclave. Even though 108 of the 133 cardinal electors, as they are known, were appointed by Pope Francis, which ought to make electing a liberal cardinal as pope a foregone conclusion, the conclave often throws up complete surprises. No one, for example, even mentioned Francis as papabile – a potential pope – before the conclave in 2013.
With this in mind, one single vote – that of Becciu – could have had huge consequences for the Church. Which has made the question of Becciu’s involvement so essential.
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