Vatican: No jurisdiction over journalists in leaks case

VATICAN CITY -- A Vatican court declared Thursday it had no jurisdiction to prosecute two journalists who wrote books based in part on confidential documents exposing greed, mismanagement and corruption in the Holy See, ending a trial that drew scorn from media-rights groups.

The court convicted a Vatican monsignor and an Italian public-relations expert for having conspired to leak documents but cleared them of having formed a criminal association to do so. A fifth defendant, the monsignor's secretary, was absolved of all charges.

The verdict was an embarrassment to Vatican prosecutors, who had accused journalists Emiliano Fittipaldi and Gianluigi Nuzzi of conspiring and putting pressure on the three other defendants to get the information.

Prosecutors had accused the three of forming a shady, secretive criminal organization that conspired to reveal confidential Vatican documents.

In the end, the president of the four-judge tribunal, Judge Giuseppe Dalla Torre, asserted the Vatican had no jurisdiction over the journalists and ruled there wasn't enough evidence to show any such criminal organization existed.

Speaking in the name of Pope Francis, Dalla Torre prefaced his sentence by insisting the freedom of the press was enshrined in the Vatican legal code, and freedom of thought was "guaranteed by divine law."

Fittipaldi and Nuzzi wrote blockbuster books last year based on Vatican documents exposing the greed of bishops and cardinals angling for big apartments, the extraordinarily high costs of getting a saint made and the loss to the Holy See of millions of euros in rental income because of undervalued real estate.

The documentation had been compiled by a pontifical commission ordered by Francis to gather information about Vatican finances to make them more transparent and efficient.

Monsignor Lucio Vallejo Balda, the reform commission's No. 2, admitted in court he gave Nuzzi 85 passwords to password-protected documents.

He denied the journalists threatened him and put the blame of feeling pressured on Francesca Chaouqui, the communications consultant who was also a member of the commission.

The court convicted Vallejo of passing documents to the journalists and sentenced him to 18 months in prison.

While clearing Chaouqui of actually passing documents, the court found her guilty of conspiring with Vallejo and sentenced her to a 10-month suspended sentence.

The fifth defendant, Nicola Maio, was cleared.