Vatican spy story takes center stage as fraud trial resumes

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican’s huge fraud and extortion trial resumes Friday after exposing some unseemly realities of how the Holy See operates, with a brand new spy story taking middle stage that’s extra befitting of a 007 thriller than the interior workings of a papacy.

In response to written testimony obtained Thursday, one among Pope Francis’ prime advisers introduced in members of the Italian secret service to comb his workplace for bugs and commissioned intelligence stories from them, fully bypassing the Vatican’s personal police drive within the course of.

The reported actions of Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the No. 2 within the Vatican secretariat of state, elevate some elementary questions concerning the safety and sovereignty of the Vatican Metropolis State, since he purportedly invited international intelligence operatives into the Holy See’s interior sanctum, after which outsourced inner Vatican police spy work to them.

Peña Parra hasn’t been charged with any crime, although his subordinates have. They’re amongst 10 individuals, together with a once-powerful cardinal, on trial within the Vatican felony tribunal in reference to the Vatican’s bungled 350 million euro funding in a London property.

Within the trial, which resumes Friday, prosecutors have accused the Holy See’s longtime cash supervisor, Italian brokers and legal professionals of fleecing the pope of tens of tens of millions in charges and of then extorting the Vatican of 15 million euros to lastly get full possession of the property.

Pe ñ a Parra’s position within the scandal has at all times been anomalous, since he approved his subordinates to barter the ultimate contracts within the deal, after which triggered a suspicious transaction report when he sought a 150-million-euro mortgage from the Vatican financial institution to extinguish the mortgage on the property. However prosecutors not less than for now have spared him indictment.

The brand new testimony, reported by the Italian company adnkronos and “Domani” each day and obtained Thursday by The Related Press, supplies one other twist within the affair and underscores the Hollywood ranges of intrigue that plague the Vatican and have hardly ever come to gentle. Till now.

One among Peña Parra’s former deputies, Vincenzo Mauriello, advised prosecutors that in Could or June 2019, after the London deal was finalized, Peña Parra advised him he needed to do a safety sweep of his workplace as a result of he believed his personal conversations “after a short time have been changing into recognized exterior.”

Peña Parra requested if Mauriello if he knew anybody exterior the Vatican safety equipment who might do the job and Mauriello mentioned he urged a pal who labored in Italy’s AISI international intelligence service. After a preliminary assembly, the spy, Andrea Tineri, carried out the sweep on a Friday afternoon when few individuals have been within the palazzo, Mauriello testified.

Nothing was discovered. However Peña Parra then requested Tineri to supply some intelligence dossiers on key figures, Mauriello testified. Tineri and his boss on the AISI introduced the findings to Peña Parra, handing over a white envelope in one among their many encounters on Vatican soil, he mentioned.

Adnkronos quoted unnamed Italian intelligence officers as denying Mauriello’s account. However Vatican prosecutors recognized Tineri by identify of their search warrant as one among Mauriello’s contacts, and mentioned he had visited the Vatican eight instances. Vatican prosecutors apparently didn’t notice he was a member of Italy’s international intelligence service and that they have been figuring out and publishing wiretaps of a international spy.

That the Vatican and Italy cooperate on safety issues shouldn’t be uncommon: Italian police patrol St. Peter’s Sq., and there are official ranges of cooperation between Vatican gendarmes and Italian legislation enforcement. However Tineri’s spywork for Peña Parra definitely fell exterior official channels, deliberately so. Mauriello recalled that he even needed to escort Tineri previous the Vatican safety sales space at one level as a result of the gendarmes have been asking too many questions.

Peña Parra, who stays in his day job because the Vatican inside minister, declined to remark Thursday, citing the continuing trial, his workplace mentioned. He did not discuss with Mauriello’s claims in his prolonged protection memo to Vatican prosecutors. However he made it clear that as quickly as he arrived on the Vatican in late 2018, he discovered a collection of problematic actions that he sought to wash up, together with outrageous spending, intransigent workers and doubtful decision-making within the operational headquarters of the Holy See.

It’s not the primary time the secretariat of state has outsourced intelligence work: Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who was Peña Parra’s predecessor, is on trial partly as a result of he employed a self-styled Sardinian safety analyst with purported claims to the Italian intelligence companies as a guide to assist negotiate the liberation of Catholic missionary hostages in Africa.

And Pope Francis himself approved Vatican prosecutors to conduct wiretaps of Italian residents on Italian soil, in yet one more of the sovereignty-defying particulars of the case.