On July 27, 2021, Pope Francis made an unprecedented decision. He stripped Cardinal Becciu of his cardinal’s rights and privileges (including the red hat and the right to vote in a conclave) and ordered him to stand trial before the Vatican’s criminal tribunal. Becciu became the first cardinal in modern history to face trial for financial crimes in a Vatican court.
The trial, which lasted two and a half years, was a spectacle of cross-examinations, leaked documents, and bitter accusations. Ten co-defendants joined Becciu, including Mincione, Torzi, and several former Vatican officials. The prosecution alleged fraud, embezzlement, extortion, and abuse of office. The defense argued that the Vatican had no proper financial laws at the time and that everyone—from the Pope’s own secretaries to the cardinals—had approved the London investment.
In December 2023, the verdicts arrived. Cardinal Becciu was found guilty of embezzlement and sentenced to five and a half years in prison. Mincione and Torzi received lighter sentences. The court ordered the confiscation of over €166 million in assets.
But Becciu did not go to jail. He appealed, and Italian authorities—who have jurisdiction over Vatican prison sentences under the Lateran Treaty—refused to detain a cardinal without a final ruling. To date, Becciu remains free, living in a Vatican apartment, maintaining his innocence and accusing Pope Francis of orchestrating a “media trial.” Scandal in The Vatican 2
The physical church building itself changed to reflect this new lifestyle. Gone were the high altars and communion rails that enforced solemn distance. In came the "worship space" with movable chairs, carpeted gathering areas, and—crucially—multipurpose halls that hosted everything from bingo to Beatles cover bands.
Sunday became less about strict observance and more about community. Potlucks featured ethnic dishes from the newly emphasized universal church. Folk dancing (Irish, Mexican, Polish) replaced the rigid processional. The parish picnic turned into a full-blown festival with rock bands and beer gardens—a stark contrast to the lemonade-and-cookies of the 1950s.
Cecilia Marogna was a self-styled security expert with no formal intelligence background. She claimed to have worked with NATO and the Italian secret services, but prosecutors later found little evidence of any genuine credentials. Nevertheless, Cardinal Becciu authorized payments totaling over €500,000 to Marogna’s Slovenian-registered company. On July 27, 2021, Pope Francis made an
What was the money for? Becciu initially said it was a ransom payment to free a kidnapped Italian nun in Mali. Later, he claimed it was for intelligence gathering on Vatican enemies. Prosecutors presented a different story: text messages and invoices showed Marogna spending the money on luxury hotels, designer clothes, and a €35,000 handbag from a boutique in Milan. When Italian financial police froze her accounts, they found a note in her phone: “The Cardinal said to bill everything as ‘security consulting.’ No one checks.”
Becciu denied any wrongdoing. He insisted Marogna was a legitimate operative and that the luxury purchases were her private matter. But when Vatican gendarmes searched his apartment, they found over €150,000 in cash stuffed into envelopes and drawers—money he claimed was for “papal charities” but had never been disbursed.
For nearly two millennia, the Vatican has been portrayed as the unshakable fortress of faith—a city-state where divine guidance trumps human fallibility. Yet, beneath the gilded frescoes of the Apostolic Palace and the marble corridors of St. Peter’s Basilica, a different story has often unfolded. If the first great "Scandal in the Vatican" involved Medici popes, murder, and the selling of indulgences, the second great scandal—the one history may well label Scandal in The Vatican 2—is a far more modern, yet equally labyrinthine, tale of financial fraud, espionage, secret London real estate, and a disgraced cardinal who became the richest man in Rome while wearing a Franciscan cord. Entertainment became participatory
This is the story of how a whisper in a dusty Vatican filing room grew into a criminal investigation that reached the Pope’s own door.
The most iconic lifestyle artifact of the post-Vatican II era was the Catholic coffeehouse. Modeled on Greenwich Village beatnik hangouts, these church-basement venues served espresso, not just weak parish coffee. They featured:
Entertainment became participatory. The folk Mass, with its strumming and hand-holding, was both worship and social gathering. Youth groups swapped uniforms for jeans. The "Catholic ghetto" walls crumbled.