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Pope Francis was secretly tapped: Details of the conversation with a cardinal are revealed in the trial

2022-11-26 15:24:29Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Pope Francis was secretly tapped: Details of the conversation with a cardinal
Pope Francis

Delia Gallagher, CNN

Pope Francis has been secretly recorded during a phone conversation with one of his cardinals. The details emerged during a financial trial at the Vatican on Thursday.

A Vatican court heard the audio recording between Pope Francis and Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the defendant, who asks the pope to confirm that he had authorized payments to help free a kidnapped nun in Africa.

Journalists were not allowed to listen to the recording, but a transcript from the Italian Financial Police was later published by the Italian news agency Adnkronos. The content of the conversation was later confirmed by three defense lawyers at the trial, who spoke to reporters after the hearing.

The recording was made by a third party in the room with Cardinal Becciu during the telephone conversation, which took place on July 24, 2021. The call was made three days before the start of the trial in the Vatican, in which Becciu is accused of embezzlement and abuse of office and just 10 days after Francis was released from the hospital after bowel surgery.

In the call, Becciu asks the Pope to confirm that he had authorized payments the Cardinal made to a security consultant posing as Cecilia Marogna – who is also accused of embezzlement at trial – to pay the British firm, the Inkerman Group, to help securing the release of the nun who was kidnapped by Islamist militants in Mali in 2017, the transcript said.

The sums paid, according to Cardinal Becciu, who at the time was number two in the Vatican Secretariat of State, were 350,000 euros ($363,706) to the British firm and 500,000 euros ($519,580) in compensation for the nun.

According to the transcript, the pope says in the call that he vaguely remembered it and asks the cardinal to write down what he would like the pope to confirm.

Under Vatican law there is no provision for a Pope to be called as a witness in a trial.

Cardinal Becciu, who was fired and stripped of most of his cardinal rights by Pope Francis in September 2020, has always maintained that every financial transaction he undertook was fully approved by his superiors, including Pope Francis.

The details of the secretly recorded phone call and what Pope Francis knew about the Vatican's financial transactions are just the latest in a long and complicated trial centered on the Vatican's purchase of a luxury London building, in which 10 defendants are accused of fraud and extortion.


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