It’s been called the Vatican’s “trial of the century”—a legal spectacle that’s blended the intrigue of a Dan Brown thriller, the twists of a John Grisham courtroom drama, and the raw emotion of a Shakespearean tragicomedy. But as the appeals phase opens on Monday, September 22, 2025, this extraordinary case is poised to reveal even deeper fissures in the Holy See’s secretive corridors of power.
At the heart of the matter is a bungled 350 million euro investment in a London luxury property. The original trial, which began in 2021, focused on allegations that brokers and Vatican monsignors fleeced the Holy See for tens of millions in fees and commissions, then extorted the Vatican for another 15 million euros to cede control of the asset. According to the Associated Press, the investigation soon spiraled into a broader probe, exposing not only financial mismanagement but also vendettas, espionage, and even ransom payments to Islamic militants.
The case’s most high-profile casualty was Cardinal Angelo Becciu, once a papal contender and a powerful figure in the Vatican hierarchy. Prosecutors alleged that Becciu sent 100,000 euros in Vatican funds to a charity run by his brother and paid hundreds of thousands more to a self-styled security analyst. He was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to five and a half years in prison. Eight other defendants faced convictions for embezzlement, abuse of office, fraud, and related charges, though all were acquitted on many counts. Every defendant maintains innocence and has appealed.
But the appeals process—already fraught with tension—now faces a new wild card: thousands of pages of WhatsApp text and audio messages, spanning 2020 to 2024, have become public. These messages, as reported by Domani newspaper and confirmed by the AP, suggest questionable conduct by Vatican police, prosecutors, and even Pope Francis himself. Defense lawyers are seeking to introduce these communications as evidence, arguing that they expose a tainted investigation and a lack of due process in an absolute monarchy where the pope wields supreme legislative, executive, and judicial authority.
One of the trial’s most explosive tangents involved the extraordinary revelation that Pope Francis had approved paying up to one million euros in ransom to free a nun kidnapped by al-Qaida-linked militants in Mali. The pope’s hands-on involvement didn’t stop there. The trial revealed that Francis had issued four secret decrees in 2019 and 2020, granting prosecutors sweeping powers—unchecked wiretapping, deviations from existing laws, and more. Defense lawyers argue that this secret intervention undermined any hope of a fair trial. The tribunal, for its part, dismissed the significance of the decrees, while prosecutors insisted they provided necessary guarantees.
The WhatsApp messages, however, point to an even more personal role for Francis. They include references to prosecutors consulting with the pope, claims by Francesca Chaouqui (a public relations specialist with a checkered Vatican past) that she was working on his behalf, and detailed descriptions of interactions between Francis and Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, who both resided at the same Vatican hotel. In one message, Francis reportedly lent Perlasca money after his Vatican bank accounts were frozen. Another message shows Perlasca asking the pope for forgiveness and employment in the diplomatic service after he decided to cooperate with prosecutors. On August 19, 2020, just before Perlasca’s pivotal testimony, Francis wrote to him: “Dear brother, thanks so much for your letter of yesterday. I am close to you and I pray for you. Please do the same for me. You can count on me.”
Perlasca, once Becciu’s deputy and head of the administrative office that managed the London investment, was initially a prime suspect. After his first round of questioning in April 2020, he fired his lawyer, changed his story, and began cooperating with prosecutors. He escaped indictment and was eventually listed as an injured party, entitled to damages. Only during the trial did it emerge that Perlasca had been persuaded to turn on Becciu—a maneuver orchestrated by Chaouqui and Perlasca’s family friend, Genevieve Ciferri.
Chaouqui, infamous for her role in the 2015-2016 Vatileaks scandal (for which she received a suspended sentence), openly harbored a grudge against Becciu, blaming him for her prosecution. She saw the London investigation as a chance to expose Becciu’s alleged misdeeds but needed Perlasca’s cooperation to do so. According to the AP, Chaouqui and Ciferri devised a plan in which Chaouqui posed as a retired magistrate, passing legal advice to Perlasca through Ciferri. Their WhatsApp conversations—totaling 3,225 pages—offer a parallel, behind-the-scenes account of one of the Vatican’s most tumultuous periods.
In a particularly revealing exchange from May 19, 2024, Ciferri pressed Chaouqui for reassurance that the pope, police, and prosecutor Alessandro Diddi all “knew and agreed on your collaboration with the investigations.” Chaouqui replied, “If it gets out that we all agreed, it’s the end. Because if we all knew, the trial is null and void and it’s a conspiracy.” She explained, “You have to distinguish between two levels. The level of truth where everyone from the pope down knew what we were doing. And the other level, which is the trial level. Where we have to claim that no one knew, because if we all knew, the trial is null and void and it’s a conspiracy. Understand?”
Adding to the intrigue, an audio file surfaced in April 2025, purportedly of Vatican police commissioner Stefano De Santis instructing Chaouqui on how Perlasca should revise his testimony. The Vatican has not disputed the authenticity of this file. In the recording, De Santis suggests that Perlasca review his interrogation report and clarify points relating to other defendants, money manager Enrico Crasso and deputy Fabrizio Tirabassi. “He should take inspiration from that interrogation, from those questions, and clarify all those points and all the ‘I don’t knows’ he said at that time,” De Santis is heard saying.
Prosecutor Alessandro Diddi, who will also prosecute the appeals case, has doubled down on his original theory of a grand plot to defraud the Holy See and has asked the court to reconsider all but a few of the acquittals. Diddi, reached by the AP, declined to comment on the chats, stating, “The trial is the venue where the adversarial process must take place.”
Genevieve Ciferri, meanwhile, has downplayed the relevance of the WhatsApp messages, describing them as a “collateral” affair being investigated separately after she filed complaints against Chaouqui for “psychological manipulation and suffering.” In her statement to the AP, Ciferri wrote, “Continuing to exaggerate the importance of the chat messages makes no sense and is only a useless pretext, while the appeal will be based on the actual crimes and the individual responsibilities of each person for each count.”
Once the Vatican verdicts become definitive, courts in Italy, Britain, and elsewhere may be asked to implement them, possibly enforcing prison sentences or seizing assets from frozen accounts. Defense lawyers have signaled their readiness to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights if they believe the Vatican trial was unfair. The Holy See insists the trial was fair, with ample opportunity for the defense to present its case.
As this appeals phase unfolds, the world will be watching—not just for its outcome, but for what it reveals about the complex, sometimes impenetrable workings of Vatican justice. The stakes, both spiritual and temporal, have rarely been higher.