“He wants my death”, “I didn’t think it would get to this point”: thus the cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciuaccused in the Vatican in a trial for the fraudulent sale of a building in central London, speaks of Pope francesco in a chat with friends and family.
The process, which began on July 27, 2021, was preceded by Bergoglio’s decision, on September 24, 2020, to relieve him of his post as prefect of the congregation of Saints and to remove his rights associated with the cardinalate. At the time of being elected Pope, Francis had already found Becciu in the position of Substitute for General Affairs, i.e. number two in the Secretariat of State, and he had kept him there until 2018, when he elevated him to the dignity of cardinal, placing him at the head of the dicastery responsible for beatification and canonization processes. Before the start of the trial, Francis also transferred the funds from the Secretariat of State to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) and changed the Vatican judicial system to ensure that even a cardinal can be tried by the Vatican court: before, even if sent for trial, they appeared before the Court of Cassation presided over by a cardinal of parigrade. Recently, however, although the process has not yet concluded, the Pope has allowed Becciu to return to attending public ceremonies such as the Consistory last August.
The Vatican rogatory in Sardinia
The existence and content of the chats were disclosed during Wednesday’s hearing by the promoter of justice, i.e. the prosecutor of the Vatican court, Alessandro Didiand are the result of an investigation carried out by the Guardia di Finanza of Oristano, on rogatory letter from the Vatican, now transmitted to Rome.
The messages that the Sardinian cardinal exchanged with his friends and family 2022 “although they do not appear to provide sources of evidence of facts constituting a crime, describe the habitat (maturbed in the circle of family members and closest relatives of today’s suspects) in which the he subject of the Vatican trial against Cardinal Angelo Becciu is treated, returning a series of comments and evaluations that demonstrate the existence of a shared regime of substantial hostility nourished by them towards the Vatican judicial authorities and towards the pontiff”, write the yellow flames themselves in a report now published by beraking latest news.
“He’s bad, he wants your end”
“I didn’t think it would get to this point: he wants my death,” writes Becciu in a message to Giovanna Pani on July 22 of last year, two days before, with the help of this daughter’s daughter, Maria Luisa Zambrano, recorded a phone call with Pope Francis, a twist that emerged during the audience in the Vatican. In the chat, reported in detail in the disclosure of the Oristano financiers, the woman invites him to have courage, “you will see that the truth will triumph”, she tells him. And he: “For now they are the ones who triumph and pierce us!”, “But the victory will be for the honest ones”. Pani, again, wrote to Becciu: “He’s bad, he wants your end”, referring to “su Mannu”, which translated means “the Pope”. At that point the cardinal replies: “He doesn’t want to make a bad impression for the initial sentence he gave me”. And again: “I would never have imagined (that) not a Pope but (that) a man would go that far”. Pani then replies: “He’s a great coward, but you fight and make the truth shine, I know it’s hard, courage we will win in full”, “something is rotten in the Vatican”.
“And how will the Church emerge from it? My bones have already broken them and therefore I will no longer make news”, writes Becciu in another chat. “What kind of responsibility have those who have adopted this policy of false and inappropriate transparency assumed”, continues the cardinal who writes in Sardinian in the chat. “We all fall like cooked pears”, he continues, concluding: “zero credibility”.
Zizzu, Mannu, Puzzinosos
In another exchange, on July 13 of last year, Cardinal Angelo Becciu began: “Good morning! A good program for today”. A chat user writes: “A blow to the Pope on the head”, and card. Becciu replies: “I can’t do it”. “We do it”, the answer of the same user. But another component of the chat points out: “God is in control of everything, there is nothing to fear, just believe, trust and always thank Him”.
The Guardia di Finanza of Oristano also provides a sort of vocabulary from Sardinian to Italian, to interpret the chats of the Becciu family. “To give some examples, when one reads: ‘Zizzù or simply the Pope (Francesco, a name that is commonly abbreviated to ‘Ciccio’, which translated into Sardinian is written ‘Zizzu’) must be understood; ‘Su Mannu’, must be understood the Pope; said allocution in Sardinian means ‘Il Grande’ (understood, in the chat, in a hierarchical sense, not in an appreciative sense), ‘The Chief’, ‘The Principal'”. And again, “Puzzinosos’, should be understood as those who conducted the investigations and the trial; it should be noted that the Sardinian word ‘Puzzinosù (in the plural ‘Puzzinosos’) takes on multiple meanings in Italian, all of a derogatory sense, i.e. it can be translated with the adjectives ‘stinky’, ‘fetid’, ‘smelly’, but also with the nouns ‘devil’, ‘demon'”, reads the disclosure.