Defence petitions were
rejected Tuesday as the 'Vatileaks 2' trial against five people
in the leaking of documents on alleged financial mismanagement
and clerical overspending kicked off in a Vatican court.
One of the two journalists on trial for publishing expose'
books using leaked information, Gianlugi Nuzzi, told reporters
that the pair were "not martyrs, just reporters".
Investigative journalists Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi are
on trial for allegedly using the leaked material while
Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, his former assistant
Nicola Maio and PR expert Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui are
charged with leaking the material.
Vallejo Balda and Chaouqui were both members of the
now-defunct COSEA commission set up to advise Pope Francis on
reform of the Holy See's economic-administrative structure.
After Tuesday's short procedural session hearings will take
place every day from Monday on, the court said.
One of the exhibits to be presented is a long account by
Vallejo Balda of his relations with Chaouqui, ANSA has learned.
Proceedings began with the court rejecting a defence motion
to dismiss the case against Fittipaldi.
Fittipaldi told the court he can't defend himself because
the indictment "doesn't contain the least description of the
charges against me - not even an implicit one".
The court failed to say what leaked documents he is
supposed to have used in his recently published book, Avarice.
Meanwhile Nuzzi told trial reporters that freedom of
information and of the press are worth defending.
"We are not martyrs, we're just reporters but some
principles must be defended," said the author of Merchants in
the Temple.
"You can criticize, appreciate, or blame but there is
another level, which is safeguarding freedom of information".
Fittipaldi's book Avarice alleges officials in the
Vatican's Secretariat for the Economy spent hundreds of
thousands of euros on business class flights, clothes made to
measure, and expensive furniture.
Fittipaldi wrote that a list of the secretariat's spending
included "crazy expenses that reached more than half a million
euros after just six months of operations".
Nuzzi's Merchants in the Temple paints a picture of
financial mismanagement, greed, secrecy and waste in the
Vatican's bureaucracy.
Both books quickly sold out in Rome bookshops when they
were released on November 5, and also became Amazon and Kindle
best-sellers.
The case is called Vatileaks 2 because the first Vatileaks
case, involving Francis's predecessor Benedict XVI, resulted in
Benedict's then butler being convicted.
Benedict's papacy was hit by the original VatiLeaks scandal
and some observers said it hastened his shock decision to
abdicate in 2013.
The butler, Paolo Gabriele, was convicted over the leaks
but was subsequently released from a Vatican cell thanks to a
papal pardon.
The Vatican has said that the revelations in Fittipaldi's
and Nuzzi's books are not all that sensational because the
pope's reforms have rendered them out of date.
The Vatican has come under fire from organisations
including Reporters Without Borders and the OSCE for putting
journalists on trial, with critics saying the case poses a
threat to freedom of the press.
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