ROME — In a surprising turn of events, the Vatican’s top appeals tribunal announced a mistrial on Tuesday in what has been dubbed the Holy See’s “trial of the century.” This outcome poses a significant challenge to Pope Francis’ legacy and the efforts of Vatican prosecutors, who have been pursuing charges against a cardinal and several others for alleged financial misconduct.

The appeals court issued a 16-page decision, highlighting procedural missteps by Pope Francis and Vatican prosecutors that rendered the initial indictment against Cardinal Angelo Becciu and his co-defendants invalid. As a result, a new trial has been scheduled to commence on June 22.

Defense attorneys hailed the decision as both monumental and historic, noting that it essentially signified a Vatican court ruling that the Pope’s actions were ineffective in this context.

This verdict represents a notable victory for the defense, while it marks a significant setback for Vatican prosecutors, who now face the challenge of rebuilding their case.

The 2023 convictions of Becciu and others had previously been cited by the Vatican and the late pope as indicators of a commitment to tackling financial impropriety within the Holy See.

A case that began with a London investment and grew

Becciu’s legal team contended that the ruling validated their longstanding argument that the defense had been disadvantaged from the outset.

“It shows that from the first moment, we were right to raise the violation of the right to defense and to request that the law be respected to have a fair trial,” Becciu’s lawyers Fabio Viglione and Maria Concetta Marzo said in a statement.

The case had as its main focus the Vatican’s investment of $413 million in a London property. Prosecutors alleged brokers and Vatican monsignors fleeced the Holy See of tens of millions of dollars in fees and commissions to acquire the property, and then extorted the Holy See for $16.5 million to cede control of it.

The original investigation spawned two main tangents involving Becciu, once a leading Vatican cardinal and future papal contender. He was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to 5½ years in prison. The tribunal convicted eight other defendants of embezzlement, abuse of office, fraud and other charges and imposed tens of millions of dollars in restitution to the Holy See.

All defendants maintained their innocence and appealed after a two-year trial that opened a pandora’s box of unwanted revelations about papal ransom payments to Islamic militants, Vatican vendettas, espionage and other dirty laundry of the Holy See.

During the initial trial, Becciu’s lawyers in particular had complained that prosecutors hadn’t turned over all the evidence to the defense, violating their right to a fair trial. Prosecutors had redacted some documents, withheld the cellphone records of a key prosecution witness and redacted texts among the players, arguing that such omissions were necessary to protect the secrecy of other investigations.

Defense lawyers also alleged that four secret decrees Francis signed giving prosecutors wide-ranging powers to investigate violated the defendants’ right to a fair trial. They only learned about the decrees just before the trial began, since the decrees were never published.

The appeals court sides with the defense

The appeals court agreed with both defense arguments.

In the ruling, the appeals court ruled that one of Francis’ decrees — which allowed prosecutors to proceed without a preliminary judge overseeing their work — amounted to a law, and that Francis’ failure to publish it made it ineffective. The court also decreed that Vatican prosecutors’ failure to turn over to the defense all their evidence nullified their original indictment.

The finding against Francis’ decree could have wide-ranging implications for any new trial, since it throws into question prosecutors’ actions derived from the powers Francis granted them. Chief among them was the June 2020 arrest of broker Gianluigi Torzi, who was held in the Vatican barracks for 10 days of questioning without charge or a judge’s warrant, and had his cellphones and laptop seized.

Defense lawyers were pleased by the ruling.

“The historic decision by the Court of Appeals—which, for the first time in Vatican history, ruled that a papal rescript was invalid and void due to failure to publish it—in our view results in the complete nullity of the entire investigation and trial,” attorneys Massimo Bassi and Cataldo Intrieri, who represent former Vatican official Fabrizio Tirabassi, said in a statement.

“We are confident that we will be able to reach a swift conclusion to the trial with a largely acquittal verdict.”

The tribunal, headed by Archbishop Alejandro Arellano Cedillo, ordered prosecutors to deposit all the documentation, “in their original form,” by April 30. It gave the defense until June 15 to prepare their motions before the June 22 start of the new trial.

It was the second major blow to prosecutors since the appeals phase opened last year.

In January, the Vatican’s highest Court of Cassation upheld the lower court’s decision to throw out the prosecutor’s appeal of the first trial entirely because prosecutor Alessandro Diddi committed an embarrassing rookie procedural error.

On the same day as the Cassation ruling, Diddi also dropped months of objections and abruptly resigned from the case, rather than face the possibility that the Cassation court would order him removed.

At issue was Diddi’s role in a now-infamous set of WhatsApp chats that threw the credibility of the entire trial into question. The chats documented a yearslong, behind-the-scenes effort to target Becciu and suggested questionable conduct by Vatican police, Vatican prosecutors and Francis himself.

Leo speaks about justice, unity and credibility

Tuesday’s decision was issued just days after Pope Leo XIV opened the Vatican’s judicial year. Leo, a canon lawyer, met Saturday with the judges and prosecutors who oversee the judicial apparatus of the Vatican City State, which follows its own peculiar legal code that is inspired by a century-old Italian code and the church’s in-house canon law.

In his remarks, Leo spoke of justice as a means of fostering unity in the church, insisting that it be aimed at searching for truth and paired with charity. He also spoke about justice as a means of fostering credibility within an institution, remarks interpreted by some as a reference to how the Becciu trial had in some ways damaged the Holy See’s reputation because of its many anomalies.

“The observance of procedural safeguards, the impartiality of the judge, the effectiveness of the right of defence and the reasonable duration of proceedings are not merely technical instruments of the judicial process,” Leo said. “They constitute the conditions through which the exercise of the judicial function acquires particular authority and contributes to institutional stability.”