ROME – The Vatican’s “trial of the century,” which ended in December 2023 with guilty verdicts against Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu and eight other defendants for financial crimes, is back in the news this week following revelations in an Italian newspaper suggesting, according to Becciu himself and lawyers for several other defendants, possible prosecutorial misconduct and raising questions about the legitimacy of the results.

The revelations concern a series of WhatsApp messages between two individuals: Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, a colorful former PR official and member of a papal commission who was convicted for passing confidential documents to journalists in the 2015-2016 “Vatileaks 2.0” case, and Genoveffa “Genevieve” Ciferri, a consecrated secular Franciscan, a one-time consultant for the Italian security service, and a longtime personal friend of Italian Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, a former top aide to Becciu in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State who turned into his accuser during the trial.

The fate of Perlasca, who had been a key architect of the controversial $400 million London real estate deal which was at the heart of the trial, but who was given a free pass by prosecutors in exchange for his testimony, has long been a subject of controversy.

The fact that the two women had coached Perlasca in his testimony, and had discussed doing so via Whatsapp, was well known during the trial. It has been suggested that Chaouqui was driven by a personal animus against Becciu, blaming him for using his position at the time as the pope’s chief of staff to block a possible pardon by Pope Francis after the Vatileaks trial, while Ciferri’s motive would have been to help her friend Perlasca escape prosecution.

126 of the messages between the two women were entered into evidence by lead Vatican prosecutor Alessandro Diddi, though he redacted 119 on the grounds that they were pertinent to other ongoing investigations. Defense lawyers appealed at the time, but to no avail.

During the trial, Diddi maintained that he had had no contact with Chaouqui and Ciferii, and that ultimately the case against Becciu and the other defendants rested primarily on hard proof and not the personal recollections of Perlasca.

On Monday, the Italian newspaper Domani published a front-page exposé claiming to have seen the complete exchange between Chaouqui and Ciferri, not just the unedited 126 from the trial but others in addition. All these texts, the newspaper reported, had been obtained from Ciferri by lawyers for Raffaele Mincione, an Italian businessman also convicted in the Vatican trial for alleged fraud.

According to the report, Mincione has deposited all the WhatsApp messages, along with other materials, with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers. That position is currently held by Margaret Sattherwaite, an American professor of law at New York University. Mincione is asking the Special Rapporteur to denounce the Vatican trial for an absence of due process.

The exchanges quoted by Domani repeatedly appear to suggest that Chaouqui had information about the Vatican investigation that could only have come from Diddi’s office.

In August 2020, for instance, Chaouqui sent Ciferri a message regarding what information Perlasca should put in a memorandum that would be of interest to prosecutors, suggesting detailed knowledge of the direction in which the investigation was heading. She also knew several days in advance the precise date and time Perlasca would be summoned for an interrogation.

In another instance, she had details of a famous dinner between Perlasca and Becci in at the Roman restaurant Lo Scarpone, on the Janiculum Hill, which theoretically should have been known only to Vatican police and prosecutors.

Later, in August 2021, Chaouqui not only appeared to know that Perlasca’s personal accounts would be unblocked by investigators, but she was able to give assurances as to when that steps would be taken.

Even once the fact of their messages became an issue at trial, Chaouqui and Ciferri continued to write one another.

In one such message, which Becciu has touted as a smoking gun proving a plot, she wrote to Ciferri: “We need to think about what you should say [at trial], to avoid that the chats are considered trustworthy if they ever decide to declassify them. Because if that happens, Becciu would be right. For me, I’ll stick with what I said at the trial. I don’t know Diddi. If it came out that we were all in agreement, it would be the end.”

In response to the revelations, Becciu, who remains free pending his appeal of the verdict, put out a statement Monday in which he professed “deep dismay.”

“From the beginning, I spoke of a plot against me: An investigation built on falsehoods, which five years ago unjustly devastated my life and exposed me to a pillory of global proportions,” Becciu said. “Now, finally, I hope that the time of deception has come to an end.”

Calling Chaouqui’s line about it “being the end” if collusion among her, Ciferri, Perlasca and Diddi were ever established, Becciu wrote that’s “more than eloquent.” He said he’s tasked his lawyers with pursuing “every judicial action necessary” to bring possible prosecutorial misconduct to light.

In the meantime, lawyers for at least three of the other defendants in the trial have announced plans for their own appeals, styling the new revelations as proof that their clients did not receive a fair trial.

So, what are we to make of all this? Three broad interpretations seem possible, and I suspect we’re likely to hear some version of each in the days to come.

The first is that these messages at least raise reasonable doubt about the fairness of the trial and create issues that should be examined by the Vatican’s own Court of Appeals as well as by other judicial venues, such as the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur, which may be petitioned to get involved.

From the beginning, Becciu has had his defenders, most of whom see him as a scapegoat for a systemic failure in the Secretariat of State in which both his former boss, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and his successor as Parolin’s top aide, Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, are also implicated.

According to this theory, the decision was made – according to some, with the personal support of Pope Francis himself – to insulate Parolin and Peña Parra by throwing Becciu under the bus, besmirching him by any means necessary. Certainly these newly revealed chats will be used by adherents of this view to bolster their case.

A second and opposing interpretation, which is likely to be the one put forward by Diddi and his allies, is that there’s nothing wrong with a prosecutor working with a witness such as Perlasca to prepare him or her for trial. (Anyone who’s ever seen an episode of “Law and Order” knows it happens all the time.) In terms of who Perlasca was talking to, or being influenced by, Diddi will say he can’t control with whom a witness communicates, and in any event, he’ll claim anew that, in the end, Perlasca’s testimony was not the core of his case.

It will help Diddi’s position that to find him guilty of misconduct, one would have to take at face value the word of the notoriously flamboyant Chaouqui, whose own credibility repeatedly has been called into question. (In her testimony at trial, Ciferri used a memorable image to express this point. She said she had hesitated to tell Perlasca that her advice was coming from Chaouqui, using the ruse of an “elderly magistrate” instead, because she had heard that Chaouqui “is like charcoal — whoever touches it gets dirty.”)

Finally, there’s a third possibility, which will be familiar to Americans who followed the O.J. Simpson saga closely: To wit, it’s possible Becciu was both framed and guilty.

That is to say, it’s at least theoretically possible that Becciu actually committed the financial crimes with which he was charged, but that overzealous prosecutors, unwilling to place their faith entirely in objective evidence, also decided to collude with whomever was at hand, including Chaouqui, in a campaign to see Becciu convicted by hook or by crook.

Which of these three possibilities best fits the facts likely will be the subject of much conversation, and consternation, in the days to come. If nothing else, all this certainly ought to make Becciu’s appeals hearing more interesting.