ROME — An Italian journalist who was put on trial by the Vatican for divulging confidential documents is coming out with a new book promising to reveal fresh secrets about sex, crimes and money in the Holy See.
Gianluigi Nuzzi’s “Original Sin: Secret Accounts, Hidden Truths, Blackmail and the Forces Blocking Pope Francis’s Revolution” hits bookshelves in Italy and France on Nov. 9, The Associated Press has learned.
Some of the documents reproduced in the book come from the archives of the Vatican bank, the Institute for Religious Works, which was the subject of Nuzzi’s first big expose on the Holy See’s opaque finances, “Vatican SpA.” Overall, the new book covers the period from Pope Paul VI in the 1960s to Pope Francis, according to people familiar with the book.
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Nuzzi and fellow journalist Emmanuele Fittipaldi were put on trial in a Vatican court in 2015 after both published books based on leaked documents that exposed the greed, mismanagement and corruption at the highest levels of the Catholic Church. In July 2016, after an eight-month trial, the Vatican’s criminal court declared it had no jurisdiction to prosecute them.
The court did, however, convict Monsignor Angel Lucio Vallejo Balda, who was sentenced to 18 months, and public relations consultant Francesca Chaouqui, who was sentenced to 10 months.
Italian layman Nicola Maio, who together with Vallejo Balda and Chaouqui, was a member of a dismantled Vatican commission set up to look into the Vatican’s finances, was found innocent.
Chaouqui’s sentence was suspended, while Vallejo Balda was granted “conditional freedom” by Pope Francis shortly before Christmas 2016.
Crux staff contributed to this report.
