The News are the latest in a series of leaks of evidence gathered in the course of a nearly two-year investigation in the secretariat’s financial affairs. So far, the investigation led to the charging of ten individuals connected to the secretariat with a range of financial crimes — including Msgr. Carlino and Cardinal Angelo Becciu.
Newsroom (15/02/2022 2:25 PM Gaudium Press) – Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, Substitute at the Secretariat of State, and Msgr. Mauro Carlino asked Italian intelligence officials to examine their offices and phones for electronic surveillance. They also requested information on individuals who were “trying to break into the economic structures of the Holy See with malicious intent,” according to newly-reported testimony in the Vatican’s financial crimes investigation.In an unexpected turn of events, the court of investigation heard the testimony of Vincenzo Mauriello.
A new former Official testifies on the Trial
Mauriello is a former lay official in the Secretariat of State’s protocol office. He told Vatican investigators that during a meeting in May or June 2019, Peña Parra informed him that he wanted his new offices swept for bugs because elements of his private conversations were regularly becoming known around the Vatican.
Reportedly Mauriello told the archbishop In response, that he knew a suitable person who could carry out a sweep — an officer he knew at the Italian Internal Information and Security Agency (AISI) and “a practicing Catholic,”
Mauriello claims that after making the introduction, he escorted the intelligence officer to Peña Parra’s office and then left him in the company of Carlino to carry out the sweep. He returned two hours later to escort the officer out of the building, Mauriello told investigators.
On another occasion, Mauriello says, he brought the officer and his superior into another meeting with Peña Parra and Carlino. During the meeting, they discussed conducting “reconnaissance” for the secretariat on specific individuals. However, the officer’s name has not been identified in the ADN Kronos report.
“I was not told the names of these people,” Mauriello told investigators, “nor did I ask for them since they are not a matter of my competence.” But, he recalls telling the two officials that Peña Parra could “be compared to a Minister for the Interior, and that if he had asked for information it was for the good of the Holy See, and, in any case, within the sphere of his powers.”
The officers return
Several weeks later, as the officers returned to the secretariat to present a preliminary report, Mauriello continues, they were detained by the Vatican City gendarmerie, who demanded to know who they were. Although Carlino and Mauriello intervened and brought the agents to their meeting with Peña Parra, the incident resulted in a formal police report.
Some weeks later, Carlino asked Mauriello to put him back in contact with the Italian intelligence officer. He feared criminals had hacked his mobile phone.
According to the ADN Kornos report, Mauriello provided his narrative to prosecutors in a written statement in October 2019, shortly after being suspended from his secretariat job. Mauriello’s suspension came after Vatican police raided secretariat offices and the offices of the Vatican’s internal financial watchdog, the AIF.
The former official repeated the same account during an interview with investigators in January 2020. Italian intelligence authorities have denied Maurello’s report as “baseless.”
News of Mauriello’s account is the latest in a series of leaks of evidence gathered in the course of a nearly two-year investigation in the secretariat’s financial affairs. In July last year, the investigation led to the charging of ten individuals connected to the secretariat with a range of financial crimes — including Msgr. Carlino and Cardinal Angelo Becciu.
The trial in Vatican City is set to resume Feb. 18.
(Via The Pillar)
Compiled by Raju Hasmukh
