Laura Sgro, Chaoqui’s lawyer, said her client was facing a “trial by the press” and was unjustly depicted by court witnesses as “crazy, dangerous” and “bipolar”. Public relations expert Francesca Chaouqui, second from left, kisses her husband Corrado Lanino, as they arrive at the Vatican for her trial, Tuesday, July 5, 2016.
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Msgr. Lucio Vallejo Balda, the former secretary of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, was convicted of leaking confidential Vatican documents to reporters.
Vallejo was given an 18-month sentence and Chaouqui, who has a three-week-old son, was given a 10-month suspended sentence.
The drama of sex, greed and press freedom that had gripped the tiny city state for months peaked with the surprise verdict given by presiding Judge Giuseppe Dalla Torre “in the name of his Holiness Pope Francis”.
Prosecutors were seeking a sentence of three years and nine months for her. 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.
“I think the Vatican judges have been courageous because this sentence in a way shows that even here the right to work as a journalist is respected, to recount things that are true and verified, important news”, Emiliano Fittipaldi said.
“We can not declare objectives or establish norms and not be coherent in putting them into practice and pursuing those who break the law”, he wrote.
Under the Vatican criminal code, it is a crime to take, distribute and publish confidential documents.
The journalists have denounced the Vatican for putting them on trial rather than the priests and laymen whose wrongdoing they uncovered, calling the proceedings a “farce” since prosecutors accused them of being part of a criminal conspiracy by their mere “availability” to receive information.
Both Chaouqui and Mgr Balda had been appointed by the Pope to serve on a high-level Vatican commission to overhaul finances, but they later leaked sensitive documents from that body to journalists Nuzzi and Fittipaldi who both wrote books based on the material.
The verdicts concluded an eight-month trial that featured colorful testimony and the birth of a child to one of the defendants, while also highlighting the challenges that Pope Francis faces in reforming the Vatican’s bureaucracy and controlling its coverage by the press.
Fittipaldi and Nuzzi faced charges of “soliciting and exercising pressure, especially on (Msgr.) Vallejo Balda, in order to obtain confidential documents and news”, which they then used for their books.
In a final, rambling statement, a weeping Chaouqui, who had a baby three weeks ago, appealed to the court, saying she did not want her child “to spend the first years of his life in a jail”.
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Breaking down in tears, Chaouqui said the accusations against her were false and that her “personal and professional image as a woman and a mother” was destroyed.
