VATICAN CITY—Two Italian journalists who wrote books detailing Vatican mismanagement go on trial on Tuesday in a Vatican courtroom, along with three people accused of leaking them the information, in a case that has drawn scorn from media watchdogs around the world.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, among others, have all called on the Vatican to drop the charges against Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi.
The two reporters face up to eight years in prison if convicted of charges they violated Vatican law by publishing news based on confidential Holy See documents.
In interviews on Monday, Nuzzi and Fittipaldi both called the process “Kafka-esque.” With hours to go before the start of trial, neither they nor their lawyers had seen the court file detailing the accusations against them. Nuzzi only spoke for the first time with his Vatican court-appointed lawyer on Monday morning. They were indicted on Friday.
Even though they technically risk arrest by stepping on Vatican soil on Tuesday, both said they planned to attend the trial—if only to report to the world what transpires. The Vatican is a sovereign state, and by entering Vatican territory, Nuzzi and Fittipaldi could well be detained by Vatican gendarmes given the grave accusations against them. But neither expected the Vatican would take that route, given the diplomatic incident it would set off with Italy.
“This is a trial against freedom of the press,” Fittipaldi said in an interview at his offices in the headquarters of Rome’s La Repubblica newspaper. “In no other part of the world, at least in the part of the world that considers itself democratic, is there a crime of a scoop, a crime of publishing news.” If convicted Nuzzi and Fittipaldi face up to eight years in prison. Since they are Italian citizens, any sentence would involve an extradition request. Both journalists said they believed no Italian judge would extradite them, given freedom of the press is guaranteed by the Italian Constitution and that Italy would be loath to extradite two of its citizens to a state that doesn’t respect the same fundamental right as free expression.
Fittipaldi’s book Avarice, and Nuzzi’s book Merchants in the Temple, both published earlier this month, detail waste and mismanagement in the Vatican administration, the greed of some cardinals and bishops and the resistance Pope Francis is facing in trying to clean it up.
Both books were largely based on documents produced by a special reform commission Francis named to get a handle on the Vatican’s financial holdings and propose reforms so that more money could be given to the poor.